


tributary

by oh_my_stars_and_sky



Category: Beetlejuice (1988), Beetlejuice (Cartoon 1989), Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Adult Lydia Deetz, Body Horror, Dead Lydia, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Sex, F/M, Mystery, slow burn sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:28:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24779908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_my_stars_and_sky/pseuds/oh_my_stars_and_sky
Summary: Lydia Deetz dies young. She isn't too cut up about it, considering she's known about the afterlife for years, and after all, this means she gets to spend more time with her best friend/longtime infatuation, Beetlejuice. But when she realizes something terrible has happened to him in the time it takes her to acclimate to death, it's up to her to find him, and save him if she can. The question is: how far is she willing to go?
Relationships: Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz, Beetlejuice/Lydia Deetz
Comments: 58
Kudos: 90





	1. seabound

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!! 
> 
> This is my first multi-chapter fic in a while, and I'm really excited about the concept!! I love this fandom so much!!  
> Just to clarify a couple things that could be confusing, this fic sort-of exists outside of any one particular canon, as I do incorporate elements from the movie, musical and cartoon. Beetlejuice himself is a mix of the different interpretations of the character. His dynamic with Lydia is closest to an aged-up version of the cartoon.  
> Also, I'll go more into this in the second chapter, but basically in the context of this fic, a demon is a ghost who has sold part of their soul in exchange for varying powers. Beetlejuice is a demon, but he was a living human at some point.  
> I hope everyone is doing okay amidst all this craziness. Black lives matter, trans people are valid, wear your face masks.
> 
> Enjoy!!

It’s an accident.

She drives out to the coast to scout for a good spot to take pictures, for her senior portfolio. It’s a Saturday, early in the evening, and she hasn’t even taken her camera with her today. This is more about parsing out the feeling of the space. She’s heard tell from a fellow barista also working her way through college that there’s a beautiful rocky cliffside out here, little known about and nearly untouched. 

She parks her black Vespa as she comes to the wall of foliage Cathleen says hides some sort of idyllic landscape. Pushing through trees, she feels an odd contentedness and lightness. After some time she comes to something of a path. The overgrowth surrounding it is so intense that at times she has to crawl. Beneath her fingers she can feel trickling water, running in thin lines. Finally, just as she’s starting to think she might’ve been duped, everything opens up.

It’s breathtaking.

The foliage suddenly gives way to a rocky outcropping, replete with beautiful pebbles and sharp crags. The cliffside juts far out over the water in front of her, climbing perilously high. She is transfixed. It is almost ethereal. The sounds of her footfalls seem like a terribly foreign intrusion to this place, but that thought is fleeting as she remembers what she’s here for. She begins to slowly survey her surroundings with an eye for her camera. She starts small, walking little circles near the perimeter where the woods meet the coast, making mental notes as to interesting angles and vantage points. 

All the while, she can’t take her eyes off the spire in the center, the one that juts out the furthest and the highest. She knows distantly that she shouldn’t venture out onto it. It is thin, and warped, and cracked, with a face she isn’t even sure she can climb; and yet, it calls to her. She walks towards it slowly, the pebbles making a soft scattering crunch with every motion of her Doc Martens.

Slowly, she pulls herself up, bit by bit. It is bloody work, cutting up her hands, but she makes progress a little at a time. Distantly, she wonders if she could even make this climb with her camera, but she finds it hard to care. Eventually, she finds herself seated at the very edge of the rock.

The beauty of water nearly moves her to tears. The sun is beginning it’s descent, and red and yellow and pink dance on the ripples below her as they do in the sky. There is no one and nothing around her for what must be miles and miles; only her and the sea.

She doesn’t realize she’s slipped until she’s falling through the air.

It feels like she’s diving in slow-motion. Maybe she ought to be panicking, but she finds instead that she’s rather calm. She’s sure she only falls for a split second, but it seems to go on and on. She tumbles through the air, head over feet over head, contemplating the ebbing surface of the water below.

She supposes it’s just as well. Everyone dies some time.

It all goes very quickly then. She plunges into the water, the force of the fall propelling her downward, and suddenly there is massive, burgeoning pain in her chest, and just as suddenly, there is nothing at all.

She opens her eyes. Fish swim on either side of her, and before her lies a large, spiked rockface. She blinks. She doesn’t feel the sting of the water on her eyes or the weight of it, but as she moves it still ripples around her. She half swims, half floats upward, toward the surface, but something caught on the rockface catches her eye. There, impaled through the heart, was her body. The rock around the wound had been tinged a red-pink. Her limbs float, bloated and aimless, and her hair billows like an unwoven net, failing to catch the slackness of what used to be her face. She looks down at her own chest, and smiles ruefully. There, just about where her heart ought to be, was a large, gaping hole, rimmed in red. Experimentally, she puts her hand through it. It goes straight through, and an unnatural chill runs down her spine. 

Getting closer to her body, she notices something protruding from her satchel, still tangled with her body despite her fall. Cautiously, she reaches inside, and produces her copy of the _Handbook for the Recently Deceased._

Sighing, she says one last solemn goodbye to her body, which had served her well in its time. She turns her face upward, and floats through the water toward the sky.

As soon as she breaches the air, she thinks about calling him. She knows he would come, knows he probably already knows she’s dead. Just last week, she was teasing him through her mirror, and just the week before they’d been traipsing through the Neitherworld together. She knows he’ll be disappointed she died so young; he was always lecturing her on the importance of her living her own life among breathers before joining him in the afterlife. He was good that way.

She decides not to summon him immediately. She’s terribly wet, and cold, and still processing the fact that, as of right now, she’s dead. 

It’s a rather long and arduous task to maneuver her way back to the rocky crags that killed her. After who knows how much experimentation, she finds that if she moves _just so,_ she can propel herself, almost gliding. While floating underwater had been as easy as doing nothing at all, floating in the air proves more challenging. When she eventually does reach the rocky little beach below the cliff, she is relieved to discover that she can, in fact, walk. It is a great deal easier than the floating nonsense. 

She gives herself a little shake, but feels no drier for it. She sighs, figuring she may be in for an eternity of wetness. Sitting herself down, she puts the book aside and looks up, trying to figure what to say to him. 

She’d loved him for so long.

A lump forms in her throat; anticipation? Anxiety? She closes her eyes and pictures him. It always starts with his smile, that cheshire grin that cheered her, understood her, that lit up even the darkest hours of her lonely, little life. He scrunches his nose up when he smiles like that, that smile he smiles just for her. His eyes, green and crackling, wrinkle with mischief and joy. She pictures him laughing, howling, she pictures him and she for the first time becomes distinctly aware that she no longer has a heart to beat faster in the presence of this thought.

How long had she loved him?

This was tricky to define. In some ways, she had loved him from the moment she had met him. She’d been too young then to realize the depth of what called her to him. If she was the type to buy into that sort of thing, she’d say it was fated.

She’d realized how she felt about him all at once, a couple years prior. They’d been lounging on her couch, her laying on his chest as he explained the finer nuances of a scheme he was planning on pulling as rain poured outside. She’d gone to sit up and saw him beneath her and, in that moment, for some reason, she could name what she felt when she saw him. The way her eyes lingered a little too long on his broad frame, slid down his arms to where his hands casually hung, larger than her own, rougher. How she longed to feel them on her.

She hadn’t said anything, not then. This was just about the time he’d started giving her the talk about having a life before she died, and she didn’t want to ruin their friendship by saying “Hi, I think we might be soulmates, and even if we’re not I’m in love with you, and if that’s a lot I get it but also I’d like to have sex with you.” 

So. Some things went unsaid.

But now, now things are different. She’s as dead as he is. She balls her hands into little fists, takes a breath (her first since death; she finds that although no air inflates her lungs, it is a comforting gesture) and she lets the words fall from her lips;

_“Though I know I should be wary, still I venture someplace scary._

_Ghostly haunting I turn loose; Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.”_

Silence greets her, only interrupted by the quiet incessant lapping of the sea at the sun-bleached rock. She turns, slowly surveying the sea, the surface of the rock, the sand. 

She’s alone.

She tries it again, this time, just what’s vital.

“ _Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice._ ”

Nothing. Deaf to the futility, she cries out to him till her voice becomes guttural, says it again and again. Even as she sinks down, pressing her back against the rock, she turns his name over and over like the ocean wears a pebble down lovingly, angrily, until there is nothing, until her voice gives out.

How long does she sit there?

She can’t quite tell. Time is a funny and fickle thing for the dead. The tides come in, and the tides go out. When the water is particularly high, she winds up submerged. It doesn’t make much difference. She sits, eyes staring forward, unblinking, unstung from the water, brimming with a sadness she has no words for. The fish swim through the hole in her chest sometimes. 

After what could have been a week or much longer ( _how much longer, she doesn’t allow herself to guess_ ), something clicks in her mind. Something was wrong. He wouldn’t just abandon her like this. She rises, and shakes herself off. She finds her handbook exactly where she left it. She grabs it, doesn’t bother leafing through it, and sifts through the rocks at her feet till she finds something comparable to chalk. Biting her cheek and clutching her book, she draws a passable door on the face of the cliff, and knocks three times. 

************

The waiting room is small, and full of peculiar characters; a man as bloated as a bullfrog mid-croak, a woman whose mouth was pouring a lazy river of blood down her front, a boxer whose body was one big bruise. As she steps through the door her wet hair falls in front of her eyes, and she makes no attempt to brush it aside. She sloshes past them, marching herself right up to the front desk.

“Excuse me, mija,” says the woman behind the desk, blue with slit wrists and red hair, “You have to wait your turn. You cannot just waltz in here and expect to have us fix all your little problems. Do you see the line? I-”

“Where is Beetlejuice?” she asks, and hears the wetness of her own voice, the heavy mudiness that comes with lungs steeped in eternal water. 

The woman behind the window turns a pale shade of robin’s egg and the whole place goes hush at the sound of the name.

“You don’t need to worry, mija, he can’t hurt you. He can’t hurt anyone anymore. He’s gone.” she explains plaintively, quietly, clutching slightly at her sash.

“Gone?” Lydia feels as if she is coming unstuck, as if nothing is tethering her in place, as if she is falling upwards. “That’s impossible. He just- We were just- He would never hurt me.” 

There is silence. “Where did he go?” she asks finally, voice small.

Miss Argentina looks at her with equal parts pity and fear. “No one knows, honey, he ran with a bad crowd. He’s been gone for a while.”

“That’s impossible,” Lydia repeats, “That’s impossible. I only just-”

“Let me see your handbook, mija,” she says, taking it from Lydia’s trembling hand and flipping it open to the front page, where she seemed to see some sort of chart. “See, honey, you’ve been dead for five years.”

Lydia bites her lip. _Five years. Something bad had happened to him, and she’ d been gone. He hadn’t abandoned her...she should have called him sooner…_

Her thoughts are interrupted by Miss Argentina’s scolding. “Mija, you have not been manning your post. You must return and haunt-”

“No,” says Lydia, distantly, “No, I don’t think I will.”

She scoffs. “You don’t have much choice.”

Beyond the desk, Lydia could see rows and rows of doors. At the very end of the first bank was one labeled _To the Neitherworld._ There was nothing else to it. She would have to give chase. She starts with trepidation, slinking sideways towards the entrance to the offices, and then Miss Argentina figures her out, gives a shout, and all pandemonium breaks loose. 

The second she steps into the hallway there’s half a football team on her tail. She pulls draws out of filing cabinets and topples chairs as she runs past, anything to slow them down. She runs without caution or worry, with a single-mindedness, with a goal. Even those who start to catch up to her slip, and distantly she realizes it is her watery footsteps causing them to slide. She can hear shouting, and she forcibly blocks out the flurry of motion, the many limbs reaching out at her. She reaches the door, and throws it open. From behind her, a clawed arm reaches and grabs her shoulder, spinning her around.

She looks in the face of a gnarled female figure, who spits at her and says, “Do not do this, child. If you do this, there is no turning back. Whatever you think he can give you, I promise it’s a lie.”

Lydia shrugs her off, and jumps into the swirling light on the other side of the door.


	2. icebath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia begins her search for Beetlejuice, and encounters some old friends.

Lydia lands with a hard thud onto the hard black nothingness that is of the ground of the Neitherworld. She lays there for a moment, wet and cold. The hole in her chest is throbbing. Orienting herself, she sits up and squints around. She’s on the outskirts of town, about a twenty minute walk from the Roadhouse. She shrinks at the thought of the Roadhouse without him, but decides it's probably the best place to start her search.

She picks herself up and makes quick work of the trail through the woods to Beetlejuice’s home, which itself was also on the outskirts of town, just where the woods started thickening, but was a decent trek to the west from where she had landed. 

The trees in the Neitherworld are strange and off-put, just like everything there. They are massive, looming things, grey and purple and burgeoning with death. They slope every which way, but she knows the path well, having walked it with Beetlejuice an uncountable amount of times, slinking away from pranks, galavanting in the night. Stargazing. The stars were visible in the Neitherworld, but they were fuzzy and unsure, like you were looking at them through jello, like even they were not sure if they were really there.

She feels an uncomfortable lump begin to rise in her throat at the thought of him pointing up at Orion’s belt. That night she had slept beside him on the forest floor, had pretended not to notice when his arm slipped around her, had shoved down the deep desire to pin him to the ground where he lay.

It occurs to her, dimly, that he may not have ever wanted her in the first place. She liked to think he was simply being respectful of her youth, but it could be that he would never return her feelings. 

She finds this does not deter her from her resolve to find him at all. Even if he doesn’t think of her the way she thinks of him, she loves him, and she knows she is special to him.

It occurs to her, darkly, as she feels the clamminess of her skin, that she is probably not as beautiful as she once was. She’s paler now, so white she’s almost blue, and her hair is bedraggled, and there’s the gaping hole in her chest to speak of. Perhaps his fondness of her would be swayed by this.

She puts the thought out of her mind as she comes to the clearing the Roadhouse backs onto.

She steels herself. She really has no idea what she is walking into, no idea if Jaques and Ginger still live there, no idea if she’s even welcome, if she’ll have to break in, but she has to try something, and the front door seems as good an option as any.

Taking a breath, she knocks. She didn’t remember the door being quite so large, but it seems to loom over her small, soggy frame. Still, her resolve does not buckle. There is some indistinct creaking and clanking and clacking before the door swings slowly open, revealing a tall skeleton in black joggers and a tank top.

“Jaques,” she says simply, and for a moment the two of them stand there, looking at one another in silence. He seems heavier in spirit than she remembers him, gloomy and encumbered in ways she doesn’t recognize on his frame but knows intimately nonetheless. 

His eyes narrow, as though he is trying to place her, and then suddenly they shoot open wide.

“Ça, alors,” he murmurs, his voice and face unreadable, “Leedia, no?”

She nods solemnly.

“You know ‘e is not ‘ere, yes?”

She nods again.

His eyes dart around, searching the landscape behind her before he curses under his breath and says, “Well, come in, mon cherie.”

*****

They walk down the dusty black and white halls, the squelching of her wet footfalls and the clanging of his bones mingling in the silent corridor. The house itself seems to sag, to droop and mope.

“‘’Ow long ‘ave you been dead?” he asks, looking forward, and she bites her lip.

“Five years,” she says. She’s sure he’s not expecting her voice to be so muddied and heavy, but the unceasing water marring and blurring every bit of her might have clued him in. 

They reach his door, and he awkwardly coughs as he turns the knob, gesturing for her to follow. It’s dark inside, danker than she remembers. All the exercise equipment is strewn in a corner, the mats leaned against the wall.

He sits down at a plain wooden table, and she crosses behind him and leans against the counter. 

“How long has he been gone?”

Jaques takes a long time to answer. “Three years.”

She nods grimly.

“What are you doing ‘ere?” he asks, almost angry, distantly tired.

“I’m going to find him. I thought this was the best place to start.”

He laughs, and it sounds like a jackhammer failing to start from rust, from age, from disuse.

“Find ‘im? Leedia-” but he does not finish, cutting himself off. Instead, after a moment, he says with sudden urgency, ”Where are you supposed to be right now?”

She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I have to find him.”

“J'y crois pas,” he says to himself, rising and, with great hesitation and something that looks like pain, he crosses to the door. 

“Wait ‘ere,” he says to her, and he exits back out to that long, checkerboard hallway.

For the first time, maybe since her death, certainly in a long while, she allows herself a moment of practiced calm. This place feels empty, but it still feels like home. She longs for him, and she feels how the house, the walls, the floor, the black, the white, echoes her longing. There is a remembrance of him here that is physical, that she can almost touch. 

Suddenly, she stands stock still and straight up. A strange and icy feeling fills the cavity of her chest and, reaching up, she finds she is spilling ice cold water. It is bucketing out of the hole where her heart should be, but she finds as she opens her mouth to gasp that it is coming from there too, dropping from her lips like words too chewed on, or frozen blood. It is trickling from her eyes as well, and she knows, somehow, that it is a warning. Quietly, she steals forward, easing the door open, silently begging its hinges not to betray her. She makes it to the hallway, and, cautiously as she can, she slinks up to the door to his old room. 

She’s about to try the knob when it opens softly, almost inviting her inside. Gulping, she wills herself forward. 

*****

The apartment is a kaleidoscope of thrown books and clothes and very old beer bottles. She smiles sadly. Her friend had left in a hurry. She leans down to inspect the haphazard mess of it all; pornos, joke books, old looking scrolls. Making her way into the kitchen she finds the cabinets open and full of bugs, some crawling, some dead, all suspended there by something invisible. It’s as though the apartment was hoarding them for him, waiting for his return. 

On the counter is a note written on the back of an old pink advert:

_Lyd’s birthday soon: What to get her?_

Underneath it he had simply written her name three times:

_Lydia_

_Lydia_

_Lydia_

There is a chunk of text under that, but it had been completely obliterated by violent pen marks.

She notices a stiff piece of cardstock peeking out from beneath the pink note and, shifting the paper, discovers a small black business card, gilded with golden writing that appears to flit and flutter around as she reads it. 

_Alcor’s Alcove_

_Invitation Only_

She pockets it, and the pink note, and continues to the bedroom. At first, she can barely coax herself over the thresh-hold. His bed is unmade, and it holds his shape. She walks to it without realizing, gazing at it, studying his form, or the empty space that laid there in its place. The water trickling from her eyes begins to warm, and she realizes after a moment that she is crying. She stands there, surrounded by him, alone, hollow. Something guides her eyes softly to the nightstand. 

There, she sees a black box tied with a simple green ribbon. She crosses the room, and sees it labeled _Lydia Deetz_ in a scrawl that could only be his. With shaking hands she undoes the bow, opens the box to find a beautiful necklace inside; a braided chain, black and white, bearing a small green charm with the etching of a snake. 

She smiles, and clasps it around her neck. At once, she feels warmth blossoming through her. She hadn’t realized how long it had been since she’d felt warm. It is as though she is being cradled by him. After a few blissful moments, the ice in her chest returns with a thrumming anxiety. After one more fleeting glance around ( _the bed, where she’d never got to love him, the closet, the bedside table, the dresser, all caverns of him_ ), she flees back through the living room and opens the door before she stops short. 

****

Down the hallway, Jaques and Ginger are loitering on the spider’s doorstep, darkly muttering to one another. He seems tired, she seems angry. Straining, Lydia hears bits of their exchange.

“Are ya kiddin’? How could ya even-”

“Ginger, be reasonable, we ‘ave no choice-”

“I will _not let ya_ do it, ya can’t turn her in-”

She interrupts before she can even process that she’s doing it.

“Turn me in?”

Jaques and Ginger turn to face her in one slow, scared motion.

They all gape at one another for a long time. 

Finally, Jaques sputters, “‘Ow did you get in there?”

She shrugs. “The door just opened. Why, haven’t you been in here since-”

But Jaques shakes his head.

“The door sealed behind him, honey,” Ginger says, confused, awed, “It wouldn’t open for either of us.” She pauses, looks at Lydia with genuine sympathy. “He must’ve really cared about ya.”

Lydia is touched and bewildered but she doesn’t have the time to allow herself to dwell on that now. “What’s this about turning me in?”

Ginger scowls.

“Well, considerin’ you’re a fugitive from your post, there’ll be people comin’ after ya, sweetpea. Powerful people. Now, this _bonehead_ might’ve gotten a few ideas because he’s a _scaredy-cat_ who had _forgotten his morals,_ but I-”

“I am sorry, Leedia,” Jaques says simply, interrupting her. “ _Zut alors._ I thought your journey was doomed, I wanted to protect you but,” he closes his eyes, “I see now, how deep your connection was to him. I see that you loved him too. I will not turn you in.”

Her instinct is to distrust this offering, but something in her gut tells her he is being honest. 

“You miss him, don’t you?” she asks, and he nods. His bones are dull and lifeless. Ginger grimaces. For a moment they are the sole three figures in a mournful tableau, weary with grief. 

“Then help me,” she says, summoning what commanding tone she can, “please.”

They exchange a glance and then Ginger nods, gesturing into her apartment. 

*****

Ginger’s place is still as pink and plush as Lydia remembers it, but it bears a newly collected layer of dust. 

“Come now, sit down,” Ginger dotes, and Lydia curls her wet self up on the magenta upholstery. Jaques stands stiff, leaning only slightly on the wall, and Ginger plops down in the peach armchair directly across from her.

“So,” she starts, “what happened to him?”

Ginger bites her lip. “It’s hard to say, honey. He ran with a bad crowd.”

Lydia scoff. “People keep saying that. What does that even mean?”

“Well,” Ginger begins cautiously, “he _was_ a demon, after all.”

“He couldn’t help that though,” Lydia half-says, half-asks.

“You don’t know what a demon is, do you?” Ginger asks, and Lydia shakes her head. 

Ginger sighs, and grapples with her words a little before starting again. “When a person dies, they become a ghost. Sometimes the form they take on is fairly close to what they looked like when they were alive, like you, and sometimes it's a little more symbolic, like with me, or Jaques,”

“You guys were people?” she asks before she can stop herself.

Ginger smiles sadly. “I was a dancer. Anyways, upon death, ya acquire certain...powers, especially during your haunting period. Walkin’ through walls, throwin’ your voice, other funny things. Now, some ghosts want...more than that.” She pauses here, looks at Lydia imploringly.

“When you’re a ghost, all ya really have left is your soul. Souls are very powerful things, and, well, there are beings out there that want them. If ya want more power, ya have to-”

“You have to sell your soul,” Lydia realizes quietly. “So that’s what a demon is? A ghost who sold their soul?”

“Part of their soul, at least, yes,” Ginger confirms. “They’re rather rare, it’s a difficult and nasty process. But yes, Beetlejuice was one of them.”

“So the bad crowd he ran with were other demons?” Lydia asks, slowly.

“Some, yes, some just folks who cater to demons. It's a dangerous business, but a very lucrative one,” Ginger explains.

“So someone else involved with demons could have been after him,” Lydia says, processing. “What happened, the night he left?”

“‘E was a mess, zat night,” Jaques says quietly. “Manic, you know. ‘E ‘ad been that way a little since ‘e ‘ad stopped hearing from you, but zat night was worse than anything.”

“Nothing he said made any sense,” Ginger adds, “he was ramblin’ on and on about nothin’, and then he was makin’ all this noise in his apartment, and then the next morning he was gone and his door was sealed shut.”

Lydia nods, absorbing the information. Ginger and Jaques both seem almost as burdened with his absence as she is. She debates the idea only momentarily before she suggests. “Come with me.” The words feel natural in her mouth, and she immediately feels sure she’s making the right choice. “I’ll do anything to get him back, but even though I know my way around a little, you guys know way more about this place than I do, and I think it’d be...really good to have you around. I know you cared about him, and I know he cared about you.”

The two stare at her, and then glance at each other. She sees a spark in Jaques that has been missing from his eye.

Slowly, they both nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments, and I'll be posting another chapter within a week or so- I'm really enjoying writing this fic, I love this pairing so much!


	3. rolling rill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia, Jaques and Ginger prepare for their journey.

Lydia sleeps for the first time since her death, curled up on Beetlejuice’s couch. She’s not sure if it really still smells like him ( _ moss, cigarettes, dirt, occasionally blood _ ) or if she just wants it to so bad that she’s conjuring the scent herself. Ginger and Jaques return to their own quarters solemnly, to pack, to rest. The onus of planning is relegated to the morning; the night is burdened enough simply with keeping it together. 

When Ginger had suggested they sleep, Lydia had been confused.

“Oh honey, don’t tell me ya haven’t rested in  _ five years,  _ no wonder you’re in such a state,” she’d said pityingly. 

“What do I do?” Lydia had felt terribly cheated to not have known she could have been sleeping, but then, she was the one who hadn’t read the handbook.

“Ya just relax,” Ginger replied simply, “It’ll happen on its own, once ya let it. Your soul needs rest sometimes, just like your body. Maybe not as often, but it’s still important.” 

Then there had been an awkward sort of quiet, wherein it had silently been decided amongst the three that she’d stay in Beetlejuice’s apartment.

It was only right.

And so here she lay, curled on her side, face pressed into a ratty couch cushion, trying to remember how to relax. She takes steadying breaths, something that takes conscious effort for the dead, and tries to think of how it felt to be held by him casually, the weight of him next to her. She lets herself fall into a stupor of him, and it is easy once she starts. 

His hands are cold, his arm around her is comforting and all at once, she is sleeping.

She opens her eyes, and finds herself back on the perch from which she fell, looking out onto the water. For a moment she panics and thinks somehow she’s transported back, but as she blinks she realizes it isn’t quite the same. There’s no sound, for one thing, and the water is still, frozen in its motion. The silence is so intense and thick that it almost hurts her, and the stillness is incredibly unnerving.

Without moving a muscle, she is suddenly falling, swan-diving, tumbling, but whereas when she had died the fall had been a peaceful thing, here, in this dreamscape, it is violent. It feels almost as though she is suspended and the scenery is bulleting around her, being brutally rucked upward into the sky, smacking against her, ripping her from herself, and it is  _ painful  _ and  _ terrifying.  _

She falls like this, rough and tumble, for much longer than she should; the cliff seems to stretch on her way down, growing taller and taller. She shakes the hair out of her face, and looks around as she plummets. The sky surrounding her, pink and purple with dusk, starts peeling out, revealing strange cards that she recognizes to be some sort of Tarot, although it's distorted. She struggles to make out the pictures. One depicts a crowned woman trapped in an overturned, filling glass, stoically accepting her fate; another, a howling man vomiting a sword, surrounded by identical, bloody swords. How many? She falls too fast to count.

The water finally approaches beneath her. She scrunches her eyes shut and screams into the silence as she hits the surface. The instant she does, the motion freezes. She gently rights herself, feeling softly supported, floating with ease. Apprehensively, she peels her eyes open to find she is not, in fact, under water. She is floating in space. Before her lie planets and flickering lights, all blanketed in the deepest purple tone. It is more magical and more beautiful than anything she has ever seen. For a fleeting moment she forgets all her pain and grief and simply looks at the stars.

After some immeasurable amount of time, strange things start floating past her. It starts with a large clam shell, white and ruffled. It glides lazily towards her, spinning and turning haphazardly. When it is in front of her completely, it opens, revealing shiny pink walls. Inside lies a strange brooch, and she feels almost as though she’s seen it before. It begins to hover within the shell, and Lydia suddenly feels icy coldness fill the hole in her chest. Blood begins pouring out of the brooch, sullying the shell before both suddenly collapse into the ether. 

Things happen quickly then; odd little glowing parcels tumble around her, purple and blue and red and pulsating. As they begin to get closer they start to shift. She can’t quite place what is happening at first; they could be spiders, or beetles of some kind, but the coloring is all wrong. With a jolt of horror, she realizes they have become blood-stained hands, grasping out at her from the depths of space. She is shaking but finds she can’t move her limbs by will. Rooted to the spot, she feels her eyes widen unnaturally. 

They are a knuckle away from her when they vanish into thin air. In their place burn six parallel lines, just out of her reach. They flash in front of her eyes for only a second, before the whole scene burns and dissipates like old film on a reel.

*****

“Feelin’ better after restin’, hun?” Ginger asks her kindly. The three have congregated in the foyer of the Roadhouse. Jaques sits in an old wooden rocking chair, leaning forward with his feet flat on the floor, eyes staring blankly downward. Ginger is holding a tray with an ornate teapot and matching china, bustling about, a flurry of conscious optimism. Lydia herself is curled up on an old upholstery armchair, looking absently into the deadened fireplace.

“Yes,” she says, slowly, tasting the word on her tongue. She decides not to tell them about her dream, not yet. They’ve only just agreed to help her, and she’s not altogether sure what the implications of her vision are. She accepts the tea Ginger thrusts into her hands, sipping it quietly. Ginger sets the tray down on the coffee table, and sighs before plopping down beside Jaques.

It takes Lydia a moment to realize they are looking at her expectantly. Dimly, it occurs to her that this whole ordeal was her idea, and they probably expect her to have a plan. She clears her throat, and puts down her cup and saucer. 

“Do either of you know anything about Alcor’s Alcove?”

Ginger shudders and Jaques curses. Lydia cocks her head.

“It is, ‘ow you say, a seedy establishment,” Jaques says finally, voice tinged with something that could be fear or disgust. 

“They’re mobsters, sweetpea,” Ginger adds.

“So in other words,” she replies wryly, “they’re a bad crowd.”

“Well,” Ginger concedes, “I guess you could put it that way.”

Lydia produces the business card from her satchel. “I found this in his apartment. Either he was planning on going there before he vanished, or he went right before he did, and either way I say we check it out.”

Ginger and Jaques look as though they want to protest but each in their turn nod anyway. Lydia notices they each have a backpack leaned up against the wall, ready to go, and she feels a surge of gratitude for their determination to help her. It is a comforting notion to know there are others who want to find him, who are impacted by his loss. It means maybe she wasn’t wrong about him, maybe she isn't misplacing her love. She wants to express this somehow, but the words are heavy, laying at the bottom of the lake of her lungs.

“How are we going to get there?” she asks instead.

******

Jaques and Ginger stand behind her, watching with trepidation and excitement. Evidently, Beetlejuice’s apartment wasn’t the only part of the Roadhouse that had sealed itself shut in his absence. Lydia lifts her hand experimentally toward the knob on the door to the garage, and it swings open before she even touches it, like it’s excited to see her, like she’s coming home. 

She steps inside to find it has not fared quite as well as the apartment in the absence of its owner. Everything, the walls, the floor, the shelves, is covered with a thick layer of dust, making her watery footprints even more pronounced than usual. With a steadying breath, she steps toward the large, covered mass in the center of the garage. 

She hasn’t seen Doomie, not in five years, and she knows he’s been alone in here for at least three. Doomie’s a social creature, and she’s not sure what state he’ll be in. She says a silent prayer to no one and balls her fist in the tarp, yanking it off of him. 

To the average eye, he might be any old, slightly dilapidated car, but the sight of him makes Lydia’s heart soar. She places her hand on the hood, and he slowly opens his headlight eyes, blinking as though ridding himself of an age of sleep. At first he is apprehensive, looking up at her, but then he recognizes her and his front bumper splits into a mad grin as he beeps and whirs, hyperactive with joy at the sight of her.

It is almost bittersweet, two forgotten things finding such warmth in the existence of each other. She lets it go, because she’s excited to see him too, pats him and tells him he’s been a very good boy, and she’s sorry he’s been alone for so long, only catching her own eye in the windshield once or twice.

****** 

They park on a side street, and she assures Doomie they’ll be right back. He’s on his best behaviour, and she suspects sadly he’s scared they’re going to abandon him. Putting the thought aside, she leads Ginger and Jaques down the block towards the Shocking Mall. While she’d fit in just fine now, with her deathly pallid skin and her heavy wet body and the hole in her chest, she suspects she doesn't have much time before the bureaucracy is breathing down her neck, so she needs some sort of disguise.

Keeping their heads down, the three walk quietly into town. Lydia does her best to blend in with the shadows and move quickly. Her nervousness is substantiated when they turn onto the main thoroughfare to find her face plastered on uniform white signs hanging from each telephone pole, labelled “Wanted”. She shrinks back, walking as fast as she can. After a few anxious moments, the glaring florescent light of the Shocking Mall is in sight. 

Weaving through shoppers, she window shops as discreetly as she can until she spots a dark blue cloak, heavy and tattered and long. It's hooded, and looks like it will cover practically every inch of her. Subtly, she gestures at it to Ginger, and, noting the sign heralding “All Currency Accepted”, tries to palm her the money that had been in her satchel when she died. Ginger shakes her head at the cash but enters the store, grabbing the cloak and then disappearing for some time. Lydia hides behind Jaques, hoping the skeleton’s stature will shield her from the eyes of passers-by. 

Ginger exits the store holding an unwieldy bag. Taking Lydia’s hand, she leads her pointedly down the street, quickly turning off the main road, zigging and zagging through side-streets until they come to what looks like a mound of cobblestone. Ginger knocks twice, and then knocks again. The cobblestone opens up, revealing a beautiful tea-house. At the counter sits an elderly spider with large, milky-white eyes. Ginger presses the bag into Lydia’s hands, gesturing her down a spindley staircase before turning to the shop-keep, who had begun to slowly rise from her chair.

“Auntie, don’t worry, its just me, Ginga! How’re ya doin’ today?”

Lydia comes to a landing at the bottom of the stairs, and enters a sort of lounge, full of turned over, unused chairs and tables, like a restaurant that had closed an eon ago. Shutting the door behind her, she empties the bag onto the dusty old table in front of her. In it she finds the cloak she had gestured to, with the addition of a short, lacy, sky-blue dress, a sensible pair of white shoes, and a pair of scissors. She changes quickly, keeping the necklace from the apartment on. The fabric feels strange stretching over the hole that gapes in her chest, but she knows it needs to be covered. She regards the scissors with caution but eventually picks them up and, with slight sorrow, cuts her hair in one fell swoop so that it falls just below her chin. Looking at herself in the dusty mirror behind what might’ve been a bar at one point, she finds she doesn’t see herself at all; the girl she sees is someone else entirely.

She gathers her old clothes, shoving them into the shopping bag and hurrying back up the stairs. 

*****

She thanks Ginger for her kindness on the car ride back to the Roadhouse. Ginger tells her not to mention it.

“So,” Lydia says, parking Doomie in the garage and giving him a pat, “Alcor’s? Tonight?”

“Tonight,” Jaques agrees, and Ginger nods. Doomie beeps his horn. Lydia almost smiles. It’s nice, not being alone.


	4. river rapids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia, Jaques and Ginger start their search for BJ at Alcor's.

“Explain it to me again?” Lydia asks as she fusses with her robe and hair, trying to look as strange and intimidating as she can. They’re back at the Roadhouse, getting ready for the task ahead. Jaques, slowly regaining his jou de vivre, is doing chin-ups in the door frame while Ginger packs them everything she thinks could possibly be useful. 

“Alcor’s is a gamblin’ place. Real scuzzy and low-brow. It’s not exactly a demon hide-out, but Alcor’s been known to cut a deal or two in his day, so he might just know somethin’. To get to him, you’ll have to make it off the floor into the VIP room,” Ginger recounts patiently as she goes through her bag yet again. 

“VIP room,” Lydia echoes, “And how exactly am I meant to do that?” 

“Well, seein’ as you’ll be a beautiful, fresh face, and you’ve got that card, it shouldn’t be too hard. Once you’re inside, though, that’s when it gets difficult.”

“Because I have to play the game, right?” Lydia asks. They’ve been over the general idea a few times, but she wants to have as clear a picture of what to do as possible before she goes in.

“Yes,” Ginger replies, “Fortune’s Daughter. It’s a premonition game. You use Tarot cards, ya have to use the cards you’re dealt to beat your opponent. You get half the deck, they get half the deck. You each pick three cards to be your own. As the challenger, you’re trying to counter the cards of the gamemaster. Then you flip all the cards you haven’t picked, and the longer you go without the gamemaster noticing a card that would’ve countered theirs among your unchosen cards, the closer you get to winning. If none of your unchosen cards get called out, that means you picked the right cards. Then you move on to the final round, where you flip your three cards, to see if ya got the order right.” Lydia feels like her head is spinning, and she must look it too, because Ginger smiles at her sympathetically. “It’s...complicated, but you’ll pick it up, I’m sure. If you win, Alcor will probably talk to ya. That’s your chance.” 

“Right,” says Lydia. “And where will you and Jaques be?”

“We’ll be outside, with Doomie. You’ll wear these,” she says, handing her a pair of dangling silver earrings. “They’re enchanted, so Jaques and I will be able to hear what’s going on, and communicate with you.”

“Don’t let people get too good a look at zem, you don’t want anyone to think you are a, how you say, dirty snitch,” Jaques adds, dropping down from the door frame and stretching. 

“Got it,” says Lydia, unconsciously grasping at the pendant around her neck.

Ginger looks at her sympathetically. “Oh honey, we miss him too. He’s out there, though I know it.”

“You really think so?” asks Lydia quietly, allowing herself to consider the unthinkable for just one moment.

“‘E ‘as to be, mon cherie, ‘is magic still ‘olds firm,” Jaques points out. 

“And besides, sweetpea, you can feel him, can’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”

Lydia finds this rings true, although she can’t quite articulate how. It’s just that sometimes she can practically feel him holding her, some moments she can hear his laugh, his voice. She picks up his scent here and there, some bygone brand of cigarettes, mud, something sinister, something sweet.

And then there’s the necklace. Since she’d put it on, she’d felt more and more certain he was with her somehow. Obviously not physically, but in some other way. As she contemplates it, water spills upward out of the hole in her chest, streaming unnaturally around the necklace, not wetting the fabric of her shirt, simply cradling the pendant.

Ginger smiles at her, and she smiles back.

“We’re going to find him,” Lydia says, determined, “together.”

\-------

They get to Alcor’s just before midnight. The Neitherworld is even more peculiar when night falls; it doesn’t so much darken as it does twist. Everything becomes just a touch bigger and meaner, more sinister. Lydia shivers, pulling her cloak tighter around her as she walks down the lane. Catching her reflection in a shop window, she is relieved to find she looks nothing like the girl in the wanted posters. Ginger helped her put her hair up, and the fresh clothes really made all the difference.

Taking a calming breath, she turns the corner. There, in front of her, stands Alcor’s. It looks like a log cabin that had been grotesquely compressed and stretched, splintered and taller than should be possible. It glows with an unpleasant green and yellow light. A sort of loud guffawing is already audible from where she stands, some yards away. On the porch sit two strung-out ghosts, staring out into the ether and hiccuping every so often. One is a short, plump woman with orange skin and greasy blood red hair. The other is a lanky pale man, with cropped dark hair who seemed so thin she might be able to see through him. The two do not seem to notice one another or her, and their stupor is not disturbed even when she approaches the stairs.

Pushing the door open, she’s immediately struck by the scent. It’s thick with something sickly that she knows immediately she’s never smelled before. She feels woozy, and for a moment she struggles to stand. Biting her lip, she remembers what’s at stake.

She’s been to a bar, once, for her 21st birthday. Despite his insistence that she needed “real, breather friends”, Beetlejuice had given into her pleadings and affected a human appearance to celebrate with her. They’d gone to some ridiculous little bar on the Upper West Side. She’d worn the tightest black dress she owned, and he’d blushed at the sight of her. 

That night, five or six drinks in, she’d almost kissed him.  _ God,  _ she’d wanted to so bad. But she knew better than to try to start anything with him while she was drunk. While he was a sleeze with everyone and everything else, he seemed very committed to doing things right when it came to her.

The memory of him, half-carrying her back to her apartment, laughing with her as she recounted their old adventures, threatens to make water spill from the hole in her chest, so she puts the thought out of her mind.

Looking around, she sees to one side is a long, wooden bar being tended by an unnervingly tall, many limbed man whose skin is a deep charcoal grey. To her other side is a bank of tables, half-full with all manner of strange beings. Some are playing games with dice and cards, others are just drinking. In the back, a few appear to be making some sort of small glowing creatures do battle. She takes a steadying breath, and approaches the bar. 

“What can I get you?” the barkeep asks. He’s even scarier up close, as when he turns to her she sees his eyes are many and copper, like a thousand blinking pennies staring down at her. 

Keeping her head, she intones, “A martini, please. Dry.”

He looks at her strangely as he reaches beneath the bar, quirking what would be an eyebrow.

“Recently deceased?” he asks, pouring her drink into a martini glass.

She purses her lips, choses her words carefully. 

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“I’m not judging, lady, but nobody drinks this crap unless you don’t know any different yet, or you’re real eclectic,” he says, sliding her drink across the bar.

“Maybe I just really like martinis,” she suggests, begging the silt weighing her lungs down to cooperate as she attempts to make her voice as sultry as possible.

The barkeep says nothing, but looks at her as she takes a sip of her drink. She takes stock of the bottles behind him, all holding strange, glowing liquids.

After a moment, he says simply, “You’re a new face around here.”

She nods. Something in her says this is the right path to go down. Maybe it’s her imagination, but she thinks the pendant is suddenly quite warm against her skin. 

“What brings you around here?” asks the barkeep, wiping down the surface to her left. 

She contemplates the drink in her hand, spinning the liquid a little bit, half playing at being coy, half terrified beyond words. 

“An invitation,” she says finally.

He stands very straight suddenly, all his many eyes staring down at her intensely. 

“ _ Give ‘im the card, mon cherie, _ ” Jaques hisses in her ear through one of the earpieces. Steeling herself, she complies, fishing in the pocket of her robe and producing the small piece of cardstock reading  _ Alcor’s Alcove: Invitation Only. _

She puts it down on the bar, slides it toward him, but does not move her hand so as to let him take it. This seems to be enough for him. He leans toward her, and says in a much more polite tone than his earlier drawl, “Second door to your left when you hit the back wall. Knock twice, just above the knob.”

She nods, and finishes her drink, trying to mask her excitement and nerves.

The barkeep looks as though he wants to say more, but he just shakes his head and turns back to his work.

\-----

She stands in front of the door, hands even clammier than usual. 

“ _ Go on, hon, knock, _ ” says Ginger coaxingly in her ear. 

She takes a gulp and steps forward, knocking twice just above the knob. It opens in front of her, and she steps through into a vestibule full of swirling smoke. The door shuts behind her, and seeps into the wall, disappearing all together. She hears the earrings beep and then fizzle. Crap. Looks like she’s on her own.

From above her, a voice booms out what she recognizes to be a riddle.

“Of all of Fortune’s many daughters

Over lands and over waters

On price of all hope’s destroyed

Who ought you to avoid?” 

Of course it wouldn’t be as simple as knocking. 

Luckily, she’s heard this riddle before. She’d been fourteen or fifteen, still awkward in her limbs, growing at an uneven rate, unsure of herself, doing weird things to her hair. Beetlejuice had stolen her homework, and was teasing her by making her answer riddles to get it back. Looking back on it now, she smiled. He’d probably just wanted to spend time with her.

“Mis-fortune,” she answers, and the wall in front of her opens to reveal a rickety, slim spiral staircase. She scales it slowly and cautiously, for what feels like a short eternity. 

Finally, she reaches the landing at the top. The thrum of a strange, bassey music registers first. She rounds the corner and finds a large room. While downstairs had been run down and melancholic, this room is gaudy and lively. Many creatures gather around a long table, at which two men are sitting. The first is a snivelling, greasy looking man, bent over the table, shaking, crying. The second is a large, imposing man, taking up the whole head of the table. His hair is an electric, sickly yellow, up in a large pompadour, contrasting his ill-fitting jet black suit. The table between them is littered with cards.

The second man with the yellow hair notices her, and in the space of a moment every eye in the room is on her, standing in the doorway in her blue cloak and lacy dress.

“Fresh meat,” says the yellow-haired man, who she assumes is Alcor, in a nasal, tinny voice, waving his hand toward the cowering man in front of him. In an instant, two goons sweep him away, leaving his chair empty.

She approaches with caution, silence filling the room as she sits down in his place. Alcor grins a toothy and too-wide smile, leaning over to get a better look at her.

“What’s your wager, lass?” he asks.

“If I win, I want the answer to my question,” she says, fighting to keep her tone even. 

“And if I win?” he asks, grin growing impossibly wider.

“Name your price,” she replies, bluffing confidence.  _ It’s for Beetlejuice, it’s all for Beetlejuice, _ she reminds herself.

“We could use a new bar wench,” he says, and the crowd guffaws in agreement.

“It’s a deal,” she says, reaching across the table to shake his hand. The second she grasps his palm, both of their arms glow the same sickly yellow as his hair. She’s bound to her wager now, there’s no backing out.

The man snaps his fingers and calls the cards to attention. Beneath his hand, they come back to a single pile. He pounds the table with his fist, and they begin to float, one by one, forming two streams, one slowly circling him, one slowly circling her. 

She tries to remember Ginger’s instructions, but the whole scene is overwhelming. The look of shock on her face must betray her, because he cackles and says, “Don’t tell me you’ve never played before. Oh, that’s too good.”

He snatches three cards out of the slow parade circling him, and the rest fall onto the table. He looks them over, smirks, rearranges their order, and lays them face down on the table in front of the scattered unchosen cards.

Trying not to panic, Lydia regards the cards in front of her, bringing her hand up to hover just in front of them. She feels the pendant surge in heat when certain cards pass by, and breathes a quiet sigh of relief. She isn’t alone after all. Carefully, she picks out the three cards the pendant chooses. Flipping them so she can see what she’s pulled, she finds the Queen of Cups, The Ten of Swords, and The Lovers. It takes her a moment to piece together what order they should be in, but eventually she lays them down, mirroring Alcor’s actions. 

“Let’s get this over with so we can get you fitted for your new uniform,” he sneers, but Lydia can’t afford to allow herself to be intimidated. 

He doesn’t touch the cards in the middle, but starts flipping cards on his side of the table. She moves on instinct, with her hands and something surging inside of her guiding her. Everything goes rather quickly; they flip cards in silence, the crowd getting closer and closer until every card but the six in the middle have been revealed. 

He swears, looking down at the cards face up. She isn’t sure what exactly that means, but she can tell he wasn’t expecting this.

“So you got lucky, picked the right cards, huh? What really matters is the order,” he says, and moves so his hand is hovering over the first of his three cards. She mirrors him. 

They flip in one motion, her revealing the Ten of Swords, him revealing the One of Pentacles. He swears. She assumes she’s doing well. 

They flip the next cards; the Queen of Cups, the Page of Staves. He swears again, stands up and paces.

“Oh well,” he says, ”Might as well get this over with.” They flip the last cards at the same time; The Lovers, The Hermit.

He swears a final time, and rises from the table, throwing his hands in the air, walking away. 

“I’ll hand it to ya, lady, you play a good game,” says a grizzled man with leathery skin and unkempt grey hair who was now approaching the table. He wore an unassuming flannel and blue jeans, and looked kindly. “I’m Alcor. Congrats on beating our Gamesmaster, not an easy feat. How bout you come down to my office and we can see about your prize?”

\----------

The office is a small, cozy room with the heads of creatures she’s never seen mounted above the mantle of a roaring fire. 

“I thought he was Alcor,” she admits quietly as they enter, and he laughs.

“Who, Jimmy? He wishes. So, what question can I answer for you?”

She draws herself up, standing as straight as she can as he sits down behind his desk.

“Where is Beetlejuice?”

Alcor looks shocked and uncomfortable, eyes going wide and hands stilling. He regards her for a long time, looking her up and down before laughing again.

“You’d be Lydia Deetz, then?” 

He must see the color drain out of her face because he laughs again, a kind, friendly laugh, and gestures to the armchair in front of him. 

“Relax, I’m not about to call the Feds on you. Sit down. Why do you want to know?”

She looks at him pointedly, and blushes, looking down at the backs of her hands. “I won the right to a question, didn’t I?”

“That you did,” he concedes, “that you did.” He sighs. “Listen, I’ll tell you what I know, but I really don’t think he’s worth your trouble.”

She feels herself shaking with the effort to prevent the icy water of her chest from pounding out of her and suffocating him at those words, but she takes a breath and just says, “Well, I do.”

He looks at her with hardened eyes. “You really have no idea what you’re getting into,”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He nods, drumming his fingers on the desk. “I see you won’t be dissuaded. If you really seek Beetlejuice, the first place I’d check is the Clamshell. That’s where he went from here, the last night I saw him, and he was scared shitless.”

She nods, and rises to leave.

“I’d get out of here quickly. Jimmy is a pretty sore loser.”


	5. reservoir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia and the gang plan their next move; in the meantime, Lydia dreams.
> 
> Also, Jaques is gay, it's just a headcannon of mine.

“Ze _Clamshell_ ?” Jaques asks, scandalized. “You are _sure,_ mon cherie?”

She’d breathlessly flitted out of Alcor’s, emboldened by the new lead and eager to get away from the place. As soon as she made it back to Doomie, she’d recounted the events of the night to Ginger and Jaques; they knew about the barkeep and the door, but the riddle chamber had, as she’d suspected, disabled the earrings, so she had to fill them in on the game, and Alcor’s clue.

Now, sitting in the back seat, practically buzzing with something akin to adrenaline, she can’t help but feel her triumph begin to sour a little. Beetlejuice seems so far away still, and yet when she closes her eyes, it feels as though she could reach out and take his hand.

She shakes it off, and surveys her co-conspirators. 

Ginger is grinning, a mischievous glint in her eyes as she shifts her many legs. Jaques, for his part, looks like he might puke.

“Yes, I’m sure, he said the Clamshell. Why?”

“Eet is not a...reputable establishment. You should not be going to a place like zat,” says Jaques, shifting his bones, not making eye contact.

“Oh heck, don’t ya pay him any mind Lydia, The Clamshell’s supposed to be a lot of fun!” chimes in Ginger. 

Jaques scoffs. “You would think zat, Ginger. Weren’t you, ‘ow you say, an exotic dancer when you were alive?”

She blushes and furrows her brow. “Well, you just don’t like the idea of goin’ because- because you’ve never liked girls very much and bein’ around ‘em like that makes ya nervous!”

“Ginger!” he exclaims with outrage, “Not in front of-”

“Oh, but it’s okay for you to tell her that I-”

“Guys, guys,” Lydia interrupts, “let’s try to stay focused here. Ginger, I don’t care if you were a stripper and Jaques, I don’t care if you’re gay. You guys are my friends, I’m not here to judge you. Point being, can we please get back to making a plan? So the Clamshell is...what? A strip club?”

After a brief moment of tension, Jaques snorts and Ginger cackles.

“Oh honey, no. It’s a whorehouse.”

Lydia swallows, processing. Okay. Okay. That’s fine. They’re going to go to a whorehouse frequented by the only man she’s ever loved, who’s missing. Nothing to get upset about. 

“Okay,” she says slowly, “where is it? We can just go right now.” 

“I don’t think so, sweetpea,” says Ginger. “For one thing, The Clamshell’s the real deal. They’ll have tight security, we need a real good plan to get in there. For another, it's on Venus.”

“ _Venus?_ ” Lydia asks incredulously. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“Well,” Ginger explains, “The Neitherworld is basically a version of Earth. It exists in the same space, just on a different plane than the living world. In the same way, the rest of everything, outer space, the planets, the moon, everything, has multiple planes, and exists for us as well. The thing is, just like in the mortal realm, it’s relatively difficult to get into space. Demons can do it basically at will, but us regular ghosts have to resort to other, more complicated means. So a lot of demon business happens up there.”

“Oh,” Lydia replies, trying to puzzle through the new information. “But it’s not impossible for us to get there?”

“No, but it will be difficult. We will ‘ave to look into it,” Jaques responds, still looking a little queasy but with renewed fervor and focus.

“Let’s go home, honey,” Ginger suggests, “We all need a little rest, I think.”

\-----

She’s asleep before her head hits the dirty couch cushion this time. 

It’s very different from last time; she isn’t back on the perch above her watery demise. She doesn’t appear to be anywhere. Everywhere she turns, it's just a colorless void, but strangely, she doesn’t feel anxious or uncomfortable. To the contrary, she feels almost at home. 

She sits herself down, and the void gathers comfortably beneath her, cushioning her. She smiles, stretching out a little. She closes her eyes, going through the motions of breathing; in and out, in and out. Slowly, she picks up a distant scent, nearing. There’s something muddy to it, earthy. Something harsh too...cigarette smoke? And then there’s something she can’t quite place, sweet and dark and-

Her eyes fly open, and there he is in front of her, taking a long drag off the world’s grimiest cigarette: Beetlejuice. He’s clad in his signature pin-stripes, paired with a loose black tie and a green button-down. He’s paler than she remembers him, more ragged, but his eyes are still just as bright.

“Hey, kid,” he says, nonchalantly, almost shyly, not quite meeting her eye. 

She jumps to her feet, throws her arms around him. He feels _real_ , just as cold and solid as the last time she held him in her arms. 

“Miss me?” he murmurs in her ear, and she nearly starts crying.

He steps back, takes a good look at her. Distantly, she feels self-conscious, acutely aware of how pale and bluish and clammy she is now. She’s wearing the oversized black t-shirt she died in, and the hole in her chest is on full display. Silently, she begs it not to fill with water on her now.

“You really did a number on yourself, Lyds,” he says, ashing his cigarette. He must see her face fall a little, because he follows it up with, “Hey, don’t sweat it. Death becomes you, ya know? You look good.”

“So do you,” she says, before she can stop herself.

“Heh, thanks,” he replies, and they stand there, a foot apart, for a small eternity, looking at one another, making up for five long years of missed quiet companionship. She bites her lip and blushes at the feeling of being seen by him, of seeing him, of being with him. He grins.

Suddenly, she remembers the circumstances at hand, and questions begin to pour from her like a flood. “ Are you-is this you? The real you? Or am I just making this up? What’s going on? Where are you?”

He takes a drag, and this time he offers it over to her. _Why not,_ she thinks to herself, _I’m already dead, aren’t I?_

“I think I’m real, but this is your head, so I could be wrong,” he responds slowly. “I feel real, anyway. I remember...things. Things about you, but also things from before I even knew you. I’m pretty sure I’m the real deal. But I don’t know what’s goin’ on.” 

He sits down, and she sits down beside him. His expression is hard and unreadable. 

“I don’t know where I am, not in the real sense. I can remember up to a point, I remember worryin’ cause I hadn’t heard from you in a while, but it starts getting...funny, after that.”

She puts the cigarette out and sets it down. Grasping his arm, she speaks with passion, without thinking, words coming straight from her heart, despite it residing at the bottom of an estuary somewhere in rural Maine. 

“I’m going to find you, Beetlejuice. I promise.” 

Something electric passes between them; she can’t keep her love, her adoration, her desire from seeping into her gaze any longer. It is almost imperceptible, but she feels him glance down at her lips quickly before returning his eyes to her own. 

“Lydia, listen to me,” he says, voice gruff, pulling away from her and standing, turning his back to her, ”I don’t want ya wasting your afterlife on me. Whatever’s goin’ on here, it's dangerous. You should-should probably jus’ try and forget about me for now. I’ll probably figure out how to get out eventually.”

“What!?” she cries, jumping to her feet in outrage, “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea- no. No! I can’t do that, Beetlejuice, I can’t and I won’t.”

“Lydia, it’s for your own-” he begins, back still turned.

“Fuck you!” she screams, and she begins to cry, seething and overwhelmed. “Fuck. You. You don’t get to tell me what to do. I don’t understand how you can possibly think it would ever, _ever_ be a good thing for me to abandon you. Don’t you understand how I feel about you? Don’t you know what you are to me?”

He stands stock still, frozen, before turning back to look at her. His face is contorted into a thousand emotions she’s never seen there before. 

There is a moment of stillness; her heaving, tears streaming down her cheeks, bloodied water leaking from the hole where her heart ought to be, him gazing at her like he’s never seen anything more beautiful or more painful, like he might never see her again.

He approaches her slowly, deliberately, eyes glowing. Taking her face in his calloused, cold hands, he looks at her like he’s trying hard to tell her a million things with his eyes. Years of caution, avoidance and sidestepping fall away. In that moment, there is only him and her, brought together against all odds, standing in a void, two inches apart. She closes her eyes and rolls up onto the tips of her toes. Softly, she presses her lips to his. 

For a moment, he doesn’t react. Then, in an instant, he is kissing her back, passionately, fervently, hands tangled in her hair. He tastes of cigarettes and moss and a sweet darkness that ignites something within her. She kisses him hungrily, frantically. The thing about kissing while you’re dead is that there is no need for breath, no moment when your lungs beg so desperately for air that you have to break apart. 

It is a long while before he pulls back, looking down at her, sorrow and joy mingling in his gaze. He picks her up with all the gentleness and care in the world, cradling her in his arms as he sinks down. 

No words pass between them. There is too much to say. She presses gentle kisses up the length of his neck, marred in part by moss and scars. He strokes her hair ardently.

“I never wanted to put ya in any danger,” he says finally, voice thick and heavy.

“I know,” she replies. “I know.”

It’s impossible to say how long they lay there, curled up around each other, not speaking, only holding each other, sharing kiss after kiss.

Eventually, Lydia begins to feel something pulling her, calling her away. “Beetlejuice,” she says urgently, “I’m going to wake up soon. In order to find you, I need to know how to get to the Clamshell.”

He winces at the sound of the name. “Try not to judge me too hard when you get up there, okay? There’s a piece of chalk hidden under a loose floorboard in my bedroom. Take it to Jaques and Ginger, they’ll know what to do with it,” he replies, burying his face in her hair, drawing her close to his chest. 

“I’m going to find you, bug.”

He blushes at the sound of her old pet name for him. 

“Will I see you again, like this?” she asks, stroking his arm, trying desperately to stay just a little longer. 

“You’d better,” he says, chuckling before flipping her onto her back and looking down at her, serious. “I don’t know, to be honest. But I hope so.” 

He leans down and kisses her, intensely, passionately. She pulls him down on top of her, kissing him back, hard, desperate, and just like that, her eyes fly open and she’s awake.


	6. sea-sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia, Jaques and Ginger pay the Clamshell a visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter took me a little loner than i expected!! i'm in a math course right now that's really beating the crap out of me, but it ends next week so i should be back to a more regular schedule then :)

Ginger and Jaques look at the piece of chalk in her hands like it’s a bar of gold, or a kilo of cocaine. Jaques pales somehow to an even lighter shade of bone-white, furrowing his brow but failing to conceal the glint of excitement in his eye. Ginger makes no attempt to hide her shock and glee, face split into a devious smile.

“Oh, now we’re talkin’, sweetpea,” she says, mischief in her voice.

“Where the ‘ell did you get that?” Jaques asks.

“I found it in his room,” Lydia replies carefully. She’s not sure what she should and shouldn’t divulge about the strange nature of her dreams, so she’s been avoiding the subject. “It was hidden.”

They seem satisfied with the answer, turning to one another to discuss.

“That’s our ticket up there,” Ginger says excitedly, “and just about anywhere else too, there’s at least a few trips there by the look of it.”

“We ‘ave to be careful,” Jaques says.

Ginger scoffs, leaning in towards him. Lydia watches them bicker, confused, clutching the chalk in her fist. “Careful? Who cares about  _ careful _ when you’ve got-”

“We could get in a lot of trouble if anyone found us with that, Ginger!” Jaques admonishes loudly.

“Why?” Lydia asks, and they turn to her, as if they’d forgotten she was there.

Jaques clears his throat. “Chalk and chalk-use is ‘eavily restricted in the Neitherworld. Eet is very, very  _ illegal  _ without the proper permits.”

“Why?” Lydia repeats, more confused than she was before.

“Ghosts aren’t supposed to be just anywhere, sweetpea,” says Ginger, “Only their haunting posts, and then when they’ve served their time, here, in the Neitherworld. Chalk, chalk can get you anywhere if you know what you’re doing. Ghosts are entitled to use chalk during their haunting period, to get to and from the Office of Newly Deads, but other than that only government officials are supposed to have it. Gettin’ caught with it round here would be...pretty bad.”

“Pretty bad,” Jaques scoffs, “ _ Pretty bad.  _ We’d be thrown in the Lost Souls room!”

“You hush up,” Ginger tells him sternly, “You don’t want to scare the poor girl.”

“Well,” Lydia says slowly, trying to put aside thoughts of spending eternity in that swirling hellscape, “What do we do with it? How do you control where it takes you?”

\-----

“Okay, let’s go over everything one more time,” Jaques says, pacing. It’s nearing dusk, and the three are readying to make the leap, taking one final moment in the foyer to prepare. Jaques is dressed in an ill-fitting tuxedo hastily tailored, and Ginger in some strange garment Lydia can only describe as an amalgamation of lace and leather. She’s wearing the same thing she wore to Alcor’s; the idea is to try and blend in with the customers, who Ginger insists will be well dressed. There was a brief plan to have Lydia pose as one of the girls, but it went laughably poorly; Ginger said Lydia just didn’t have the right way about her to carry it off. Besides which, there was the hole in her chest to think of.

”Did you leave motor oil out for Doomie?”

“Yes,” Lydia says, playing with the chalk in her hand, “I told him we’d be back as soon as we could.”

“I think we’re about ready to go then,” Ginger declares, nodding at Lydia. “You oughta be the one to do it, sweetheart. You’re still in your haunting period, so you’re much more powerful than us. Remember, be as specific as you can.”

She steps forward, and writes, in big, bold letters:

_ Venus _

_ The Clamshell _

_ Storage Closet _

Before she can lose her nerve, she draws a door around the words, adds a knob, and knocks once. 

The door creaks open, revealing an eerie and alluring pink glow. Quickly, the three jump through; Lydia blinks, unable to see anything other than the white-pink light. The door slams shut behind them, and takes the light with it. 

Lydia grasps in front of her, pulling at a string. A lightbulb sputters into life, illuminating a small room, full of shelves. Towels and bottles surround them; Lydia is relieved to see on a shelf to her left a pile of what look like maid’s uniforms. She tucks the chalk into her purse, and turns to Jaques and Ginger. 

“New plan: I put one of these on, I can snoop anywhere. You guys stay close, try not to draw any attention to yourself; let’s meet back here at dawn, okay?”

Ginger nods, a fiendish grin playing her lips. Jaques looks like he might be sick, but he gives her a weak smile. She unclips the cloak from around her neck and slings it around his shoulders. 

“Be careful, Leedia,” he whispers.

They slip out of the closet, and she breathes a sigh of relief when there’s no immediate alarm set off.`

She changes quickly, tucking her purse in the pocket of the apron and pulling the brim of her maid’s cap low. Slowly, she eases the door open, and finds herself in a long hallway. The carpets are plush and pink, with some repetitious golden pattern adorning them. Every five feet or so there is a gilded chandelier, heavy with gaudy jewels. She creeps down the hall, barely daring to make a noise.

She makes it to the end, and finds herself faced with a fork in the road. To the left, there’s some sort of balcony, and to the right, another hallway. She can hear some sort of commotion from outside, and on instinct she tiptoes to the left, easing the door open. 

Below the balcony she’s standing on is a sort of patio, with many numbered doors on the four walls surrounding it. Scanning around, she sees the source of the noise, just to her left on the ground. A tall, broad man in a disheveled suit, shirt half-unbuttoned, is holding a woman by the throat, pinned against the wall. She’s neon-purple, making squeaking, pleading noises.

“You do what I ask for, bitch, do you understand?” His voice is sneering and blurred with intoxication. The girl scratches at his hand around her throat.

Lydia feels what would’ve been her blood run cold with rage. 

“Trying to run away from me...do you have any idea what I could do to you, whore? I’ll have you  _ erased from existence, _ ” he snarls, and Lydia, frantically trying to figure out what to do, registers that the hole in her chest is brimming full of ice cold water, not spilling, simply suspended.

In that moment, it is the most natural thing in the world. She concentrates, beckoning the water forward, and it listens to her immediately, eagerly, as if it had been waiting. In an instant, the icy, gently glowing liquid has migrated from her chest to her hands, enveloping them in iridescent, transparent ever-moving gloves. Without a second thought, she moves, guided by instinct, flicking her wrist. The water seeps down out of her hands eerily, replenishing itself, never leaving her, only growing. It encompasses his entire form before he can even register what’s happening. 

She yanks backwards, pulling him off of the girl. He floats off the ground, upstream in her watery grasp, struggling, panicking. She smirks, and shuts her eyes tightly, concentrating on the water, on turning it to solid ice. She deliberately balls her hands into fists, and hears the defiant, triumphant crackling of ice quickly forming. Opening her eyes, she sees she’s been successful; the girl’s attacker was encased now in solid ice that had taken on a glowing blue hue. 

Figuring it’s a little late to be cautious, she jumps down off the balcony, sliding down her new ice sculpture and landing on her feet.

Lydia regards the frozen man. His brutish figure is stuck at an awkward moment in time, mouth half open. Something catches Lydia’s eye; a flash of red on his chest- a brooch of some kind? For some reason, the sight of it fills her with dread. She shakes herself; there are more pressing matters than the frozen man’s clothes. She needs to get rid of him, and fast. Thinking quickly, she pulls the chalk out of her apron, and draws a door on the ground. She ponders where to send him, trying to think of the worst possible place Beetlejuice ever told her about. She settles on Saturn; Saturn is Sandworm territory. She writes the destination, knocks, and watches him, still encased in her strange, swirling ice, fall through the ground into the hostile landscape below. She reaches in, palms for the door, and slams it shut. 

The girl is huddled in a quivering heap by the wall, making little sobbing noises. In the light of the ornate torches rimming the patio, Lydia gets a better look at her. She looks young, or at least to have died in her youth; her skin is a wild shade of bright lavender, and her hair is a more muted, darker purple, pulled up into two large buns on either side of her head. Every inch of her skin that’s visible, which is most of it, is covered in a golden dusting. There are rhinestones embedded in her skin, running up her arms. 

Lydia approaches her slowly, trepidatiously. She shudders violently, fearful. Lydia takes a conscious, steadying breath, and says, “It’s okay, he’s gone now. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The girl looks up at her, eyes like two geode crystals, trying to get her bearings. 

Suddenly, the loud sound of boots treading on pavement disturbs the air, and a beam of light becomes visible from around a corner. The girl grabs Lydia by the arm, hisses “Patrol!”, and pulls her into the nearest door into a large suite. The door slams behind them.

The girl looks at her, frowning. “You don’t work here,” she says finally. Lydia can’t think of any rebuff, so she gives her a curt nod.

“Why are you here, then?” she asks, voice soft and quivering. 

“I need to look at your records,” she says, figuring it's a decent place to start. ”I’m tracking down an old friend.”

\-----

The girl leads her silently through the hallways, each gaudier than the next, decked out in resplendent golden drapery and strings of pearls, until they come to a small, cramped room full of filing cabinets. There is a stark contrast between this room and the rest of the place; the wallpaper here is peeling and the ceiling is water-stained. With a sigh, the girl flops down into the musty desk chair and gestures to the shelves. 

“Thank you,” says Lydia, voice deep and watery. She wants to say more but doesn’t quite know what. Lydia regards the dusty labels on the drawers, but they are illegible. She runs her finger gently across, unsure of what to do until she feels a sudden burst of warmth from her necklace when she reaches one particular drawer. Cautiously, she opens the drawer, thumbing through files until she again feels the pulse of warmth and pulls out the tab of one labelled  _ Beetlejuice, Lawrence _ .

Thumbing through it, she sees lots of strange markings she doesn’t understand. The only thing that seems to be clear is he was here, and often. The various charges to his account for exorbitant sums of money seem to indicate he was utilizing their services in wanton measure. She shudders, reminding herself not to think about it. The long list comes to an abrupt end on what she has to assume is the day he disappeared. 

When she finally looks up, the girl is looking at her with an odd expression. 

“Wait here,” the girl says, and leaves, scurrying out the door. Lydia is suspicious, but something inside of her says to trust the girl. She returns after a few moments, another girl in tow. 

The second girl is smaller, with bright pink skin and white-blonde hair, wearing a black leather number. She looks Lydia up and down, and looks back at the first girl with incredulous eyes. 

“Just trust me, May,” the first girl says quietly.

The second girl, evidently named May, turns toward Lydia, squinting her eyes in distrust. 

“You lookin’ for Lawrence?”

Lydia never heard anyone call Beetlejuice  _ Lawrence _ . Just thinking about it makes her angry. If he’s  _ Lawrence  _ to anyone, it should be her. She shakes herself, shoves the water threatening to bubble out of her chest back down, and nods curtly.

“He hasn’t been around in a while. A  _ long _ while. Longer than he’s been away in, gods, maybe a century? Two? But he’ll be back. Why?” she asks, strutting up close to Lydia, tilting her head up so they’re eye to eye. “You some harlot lookin’ to steal him? What, did he sleep with you once, and you assume he cares?”

Lydia is seething, and confused, but she knows she can’t lose her temper. She feels her lip twitch, and a sort of violence surge in the water within her, but she composes herself, and considers her options.

“He’s in trouble,” she says carefully. “Serious trouble. I’m trying to- well. Help him. And I need to know when you saw him last, and where he was headed.”

May purses her lips and crosses her arms, but after a moment she sighs.

“Follow me,” she says, and the first girl nods, looking at Lydia encouragingly and gesturing toward the door.

\-----

The room is large and resplendent. Everything Lydia can see is black and lacy and lit by candlelight. The bed is massive, and a number of strange looking implements adorn both blood-red night tables. 

It might have been the sort of place to intrigue her, under other circumstances. Now, she just feels sea-sick, like the water churning inside of her is threatening her menacingly if she does not let it out. 

“I don’t mean to pry,” says May, drawing out the  _ y _ , not bothering to look at her, fluffing a pillow, “But I need to know your name. Lawrence gave me a strict list of people who could inquire after him in some emergency situation, you know. For safety.”

Lydia stiffens, but ultimately can think of nothing to do but reply. “I’m Lydia,” she says, and May purses her lips again, a flash of hurt in her eyes for only a second.

“Alright,” she says, “alright. Alright. So you know him.” She sighs again, but appears to make up her mind. She leans down, shifting a large, thick rug over and loosening a floor board. When she straightens up, she’s holding a small box. She shoves it in Lydia’s direction. Her expression is hard, but not angry. 

“The last night he came here,” she says in a slow voice, “he was a wreck. Worrying himself silly about some girl named-named  _ Lydia _ , saying someone was after him. He- he barely looked at me. Grabbed some stuff out of his stash and left- for some godsforsaken place on Saturn-”

“Saturn?” Lydia asks sharply, voice all water and gravel. “Isn’t that Sandworm territory?”

“There’s plenty more than Sandworms on Saturn,” May says simply, turning away from Lydia to look at the blank wall. “He was visiting Ziggy. Gods only know why,” her voice softens, and she closes her eyes. She turns to Lydia with a weak, sad smile.

“You know, not many people are kind to us girls. Pia says you were kind to her. Lawrence was- was always kind to me. I hope you find him. If you- when you do, tell him May says hi, okay?”

Lydia nods, the pendant around her neck warm, the water in her chest freezing, and her heart, somewhere in Maine on a different plane of existence, goes out to May, truly and honestly. 

“I will,” she says, clutching the box close, “I will.”


	7. typhoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia and co. check out a new lead on Saturn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so late. I'm sorry. My life has been a mess recently. I am getting back to a relatively regular update schedule, I promise. I love you guys, I hope you're all doing okay <3

It takes Lydia an hour to find Jaques and Ginger at The Clamshell’s heavily laden and crowded bar-room. Jaques, for his part, is obliterated on his fifth or sixth helping of some pink little drink. 

“I could show you around ze Neitherworld one of zese days,” Jaques slurs at the barman, a strong-looking man with boxy shoulders and flashing green eyes, clad in a tight fishnet vest and glimmering shorts.

“Jaques,” Lydia says in an undertone, “we have to go.”

“Leedia,” he cries, “Leeeedia. Do not say such a zing. I am in ze middle of a very important conversation with-” He pauses, looking as if he is thinking very hard.

“Marvin,” offers the barkeep in a pleasant baritone, polishing a silver goblet.

“With Marvin!” cries Jaques, gesticulating so wildly that his drink sploshes down his front. 

Lydia scowls, and digs around in the little box May had given her, producing a small handful of gold pieces. Marvin shakes his head. “Please, it's on the house. I’ve enjoyed the company.” He turns to the skeleton, who is swaying a bit in his chair, his bones clanking. “You’ve got to go with your friend now, okay Jaques? It was lovely meeting you. Come back any time.”

With that, Lydia firmly takes him by the arm and leads him through the crowd towards the corner where Ginger is having a small shouting match with a bouncer.

“You listen to me, sugar, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You _need_ a dancer like me on your staff. I could dance _circles_ around these girls. You need to get the manager.”

“Listen, lady, I don’t know what you’re on, but you’re a _spider_ . Sure, some people are into that kind of thing, but as a _dancer_? You’re off your rocker.”

“Why I oughta-”

“Ginger!” Lydia cries, dragging a half-conscious Jaques across the floor to Ginger. “I’m so glad I found you. Sorry, sir, I’m so sorry, we were just going.”

“Lydia, you won’t believe-”

“Tell me on the way out,” she says curtly, taking one of her many hands in her own and leading her two friends out the ornate front door.

\--------

Lydia sits, curled up on a rocky crag rising over the swirling smoke of Venus. As she blinks, looking out on the endless eddying skyline, the smoke almost seems to shimmer like the water had beneath her an eon ago, on the last day of her life. Next to her, she feels Jaques take a few steadying breaths, sobering up. Behind them, Ginger is pacing, muttering angrily to herself about closed-minded newly-deads and the natural aerodynamic nature of the spider form.

“Where are we?” Jaques asks slowly, sitting up.

“Venus,” Lydia replies. “Thanks for, uh, keeping a low profile, you guys,” she adds, with just a touch of snark.

“Sorry,” says Jaques, holding his skull in his hands, “I didn’t mean to get so drunk, it just, well, one thing led to another...”

“I was only pointin’ out a serious injustice!” cries an indignant Ginger.

“Right,” says Lydia, sighing.

“Why are we still here?” asks Jaques, getting up and surveying the scene. “Why didn’t you just chalk us home?”

“We’re not going home.” Her voice sounds hollow, even to herself, but determined. A swell of water fills her chest for a moment. Ginger and Jaques share a look.

“Whaddya mean, we’re not going home?”

“Yes, Leedia, what is ze meaning of zis?” 

“We’re going to Saturn.”

“Like hell we are!” cries Ginger. “Saturn is crawling with sandworms.”

“He’s on Saturn,” says Lydia, “I know it. That’s where he went after he came here, to lay low. He’s there, he’s got to be.”

“Leedia,” says Jaques carefully, “Only really desperate people go to Saturn. And very, very few survive. Where would we even start?”

“Ziggy’s, May said he went to Ziggy’s. That must be where he is.” Lydia feels her skin turn even icier than it’s usual clammy cold. 

“I don’t think we should go. Ziggy’s...I haven’t even heard of that place,” says Ginger, crossing two of her many arms.

“It’s a drug den,” says Lydia absently, “Or at least, I think it is. May gave me this box of his things, there’s a paper in here that says something about it.” She rumages for a moment before she lands on a torn piece of lined yellow paper. At the top it reads “Ziggy’s”; underneath it, in scratched hand-writing, read:

½ ounce devildust

6 grams methampheta-scream

4 lbs starbloom

13 grams powdered martian bloodroot

1 kilo cocaine

“You think he’s hiding out here?” asks Ginger skeptically.

“I know it,” says Lydia. “I know it.”

*****

When they open the door to Saturn, they step into a sandstorm. For a terrible moment as the door swings closed behind them, the sand swirls around them viscously, catching them in tubes of rough darkness and pushing them apart. In the distance is the howl of a Sandworm.

“We’re gonna die!!! Again!!” shouts Ginger in despair.

Lydia doesn’t find herself preoccupied with any of this. All she can think of is Beetlejuice, is the fact that she’s about to see him again, that he’s _here_ , that he must be here. 

As quickly as it had started, the sandstorm stopped, plopping them abruptly and unceremoniously in front of a rather peculiar building. It was at least five times as tall as it was wide, and it seemed to have been expanded rather haphazardly; each floor looked as though it were sinking into the one below it, and there were several large planks of wood propping it up in a few places. On the door hung a small metal sign bearing only the inscription “Ziggy’s”.

Without a word she moves, walking purposefully toward the teetering building. Jaques and Ginger scramble to catch up to her.

“Leedia...just, we don’t want you to get your hopes too ‘igh.”

“He might not be here, sweetheart.”

“He is.”

“We know you zink ‘e is, but-”

“I know he’s here, Jaques. He has to be.”

She pushes the door open. A bell jangles cheerfully. The inside, miraculously, has the roominess and feeling of a Target or a Walmart. Lydia recognizes some of the products on display: cocaine, heroin, ectasy. But there are other things she can’t place, strange looking pipes and contraptions, little glowing bundles, swirling vats. For a moment, the three stand there in silence. 

Then, quick and disruptive as the sandstorm, Ziggy appears. Ziggy, or at least the ghost Lydia presumes is Ziggy, is a tall, gangly bird which Lydia recognizes as a Marabou stork. He’s clad in a faded yellow Hawaiian shirt and straw hat, which he tips to them as he hurries over.

“Hiya, hello, howdy folks!! What can I do ya for today? That is to say, what can I do for you? How can I help you?”

“We’re looking for Beetlejuice,” Lydia replies, voice severe and as wet as ever. Ziggy stops in his tracks so quickly that the tile floor beneath him whines in complaint. 

“Hmm...Beetlejuice you say? Can’t say I have any Beetlejuice, no siree. Got some distilled fire ant poison, if bugs are your thing. While you’re at it, you folks look like you could use a pick me up! How’s about half a kilo of cocaine on the house? Ya know what, I like you folks, make it a kilo. And you’re gonna be wantin’ a drink to go with that now, what would you say to space sauce? New concoction I’m whipping up, one part nectar, two parts starbloom and a dash of alien semen. Just joking, just joking! Unless that’s your thing, at which point I could certainly add some. Now, for you, Mr. Bones-”

“Beetlejuice is a person, not a drug,” says Lydia, interrupting him coldly. “And we know he was here.”

“I’m sorry missy, I can’t say I know anyone by that name.” Ziggy ruffles his feathers nervously, bobbing his head.

“Yes,” she asserts angrily, “Yes you do. Beetlejuice. Lawrence Beetlejuice. He came here. Where- where is he? Tell me where he is right now, you filthy-”

“Lydia, sweetpea, let’s stay calm,” interjects Ginger, but to little avail.

“Lady, your friend is right, you need to chill. Might I offer you some premium, top-of-the-line opium?”

“TELL ME WHERE HE IS,” she screams, and three things happen; water pounds out of the hole in her chest, engulfing her, suspending her, but it is her water, and it only empowers her, lording over a cowering Ziggy. At the same time, every receptacle in the place holding any liquid instantly explodes, pouring its content onto the floor, joining her growing bubble of power. And in the corner of the room, where several couches are haphazardly shoved, a bright white light shines in the shape of the man she loves. He is not really there; it is only a mirage, a memory the space holds. 

She takes a deep breath, and commands the water back to its source, landing squarely on her feet. 

“I know he was here, Ziggy.” she says simply.

Ziggy, for his part, seems to be struggling to catch his bearings.

“She is _so powerful_ ,” he says to Ginger and Jaques, who nod. “And she must be really connected to him, to pick up on such an old energy profile like that. Holy crap.”

There is a moment of silence.

“Okay,” he says finally, wearily. “Okay. So he was here. You caught me, kid. But he’s not here anymore.”

“Do you know where he is?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says, more wearily still, looking guilty and tired.

“Well, tell us where!” she cries, unable to weed the excitement out of her voice.

“I’ll tell you,” he says, taking a long drag off a blunt that materialized in his beak, “but you’ve got to listen to the whole story because the thing is, kid, there’s nothing you can do.”

She nods begrudgingly, and he leads the three up a winding staircase into what appears to be a sitting room. 

*****

“Beej was a great customer of mine. Loved cocaine, loved the wild wild west of Saturn, loved shootin’ the shit. But he wasn’t popular among demons. I work with demons a lot, and I’ll tell you, the only one I ever liked was Beej. Rest were just obsessed with power and pleasure. Guess that’s the typa folk who go for becoming a demon. Never could figure out why Beej did it, but that’s besides the point. He showed up here one night, scared shitless, asking to couch surf. I said, shit, man, sure, I don’t care. But I could tell something was wrong. He got tangled up in somethin’ he shouldn’t’ve been messing with. They showed up next morning,” Ziggy shivers, pausing to look at his talons.

“Who showed up?” Lydia presses him.

“I’m gettin’ to that. Anyhow, I wake up to my store bein’ raided, only they’re not after my goods, they’re after my friend. And what do I do? I hide. Like an asshole. I hide in my shitty little attic until they’re gone. But I saw them. Was three demons. Castor, Pollux and Saiph. Some of the most powerful of all time. But it wasn’t just them. They had these government folks with ‘em, ya know, brooch and all. They said they were taking him to Neptune for containment and detainment. That was three years ago. Not a day goes by where I don’t feel guilty. I know where he is, but there’s nothing I can do. Three demons, plus the support of the government? Even you wouldn’t be able take them down, and you’re pretty fuckin’ powerful.”

They all sit in silence. Jaques puts his arm around Ginger. Ziggy seems to be crying. Lydia furrows her brow, thinking.

“If I were to become a demon,” she says finally, “would I stand a chance at beating them?”

“Maybe,” says Ziggy, scoffing, “But you’d probably have to become a fully-fledged demon, and that’s never been done.”

“Well,” she says, rising, “that’s about to change.”


	8. vortex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lydia has a meeting with god re: becoming a demon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> late yet again, but better late than never, right folks?
> 
> hope you enjoy, I am already working on the next chapter
> 
> xox

“Lydia, honey, think about this for a second, please, ya don’t know-”

“Don’t try to stop me.”

“Leedia, its too dangerous!! And even if you were to try, it’s very difficult-”

“I don’t care how difficult it is. If this is what I need to do to get him back, no one is going to stop me.”

Ziggy seems to be trying to shrink down as small as he possibly could, ruffling his feathers and looking nervously back and forth between Lydia and Jaques and Ginger. 

“Please, Lydia,” begs Ginger, her face contorted in grief. Lydia turns her back.

“Where do I go, to become a demon?” Her voice is heavy and wet, and she can feel water threatening to turn to ice in her chest. Ziggy takes a step back from her, shaking his head.

“Well now, I never said I knew how,” he says, chuckling nervously and looking around. “Demons are secretive folk, you have to understand, secretive and _powerful_ and they don’t exactly like the idea of there being more demons, seeing as that would be a potential threat to their power, and even if I _did_ know, which I’m not sayin’ I do but if I did I wouldn’t tell you, you’re just a pretty young ghost, not even out of your hauntin’ period, and you’re about to throw all that away for-”

“Ziggy,” she says, voice calm and direct and deep as the ocean, “have you ever loved someone?”

Her voice rings out in the silence, echoing and spilling. Ziggy’s eyes grow sad, frame slumping with weariness and something like melancholy.

“Yes.”

“What happened to them?” she asks, peering at him. There is a long moment before Ziggy answers.

“Lost soul’s room for dealin’ without a license,” he says, avoiding her eyes.

“Ziggy,” she says, pointedly, “the person I love is out there. I need to get to him, and I will do whatever it takes.”

“You’re stronger than I am,” he rasps, looking down and trying for a chuckle but ending up with something closer to a sob.

“Please. Tell me where to go.”

“It’s deep, deep space. You can’t get there just by just chalk or nothin’. You need starbloom, and you need blood.”

“Can I find those here?”

Ziggy sighs. “Yes. Yea, you can. Hell, I’ll give ‘em to ya for free, even. But please be careful.”

Lydia nods solemnly. 

*******

The light had shifted on Saturn by the time Ziggy had finished packing what Lydia would need into something he called a portal pack, and reluctantly sent her outside, but not before making her promise to be careful again. She walks a few feet in the sand, taking in the cold grittiness of the air. She hears the door clang open behind her.

“Can we talk about this for a minute, please?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going, and you can’t stop me.”

“Leedia-”

“Why can’t you see this is something I need to do?”

“Honey, we’re-”

“If you care about him at all, then you know I have no choice!” she shouted, feeling ice water coursing through her body as her voice rang out in the cold expanse of Saturn.

“Lydia, we’re not letting you do this alone.”

She turns around to see them standing, resolute, holding their own packs. Jaques gives a little smile.

“What, did you zink we were just going to let you go?”

Ginger reachs into a bag, unearthing the beautiful, dark blue cloak and extending it to Lydia. She takes it, wrapping it around her shoulders and pushing the hood up, feeling a broad smile grow on her face.

It's nice to have friends. 

“Let’s get going, honeybun. We haven’t much time.”

Lydia nods, and in careful unison the three spill their packs on the ground. The starbloom mixes with the blood, and around them blossoms a beautiful sort of rose gold light, parsing off into little globs of piercing light. Bit by bit, the light fades, and they fade along with it.

****

There is about an eternity of nonsense sea-sick travel in pitch black darkness. Lydia can’t see Ginger or Jaques, and can’t open her mouth to call out to them. She couldn’t do anything at all, in fact, having, instead, to simply hurtle uncontrollably toward the unknown. After a while she feels almost as though she were becoming part of the nothingness around her, as if she were nothing too. She thinks about the cliff she died on, and she thinks about her parents. It had been a long while since she had thought about them; she feels a twinge of guilt. She never thought she’d be nostalgic for Delia’s antics.

She hopes they're okay.

She thinks about her cat, Percy, and she thinks about her moped and her camera and her dumb barista job. She thinks about the old haunted house, about red dresses and old underlined classics and a dozen other things that made her her.

She thinks about Beetlejuice, about the green of his hair and eyes and the grit of his voice and the strange cold softness of his touch. She thinks of his sweetness, of his darkness, of the sound of him calling her “babes” roughly, tucking her in late at night. She thinks about how badly she wanted to beg him to stay, she thought about how it seemed he wanted to stay just as bad. 

She thinks about how she dreamed of him even in death, how real that one dream had been, where he’d told her where to find the things she needed to get to him. Had it really been him, holding her somehow?

Her heart pangs.

Would she ever get to hold him like that? 

She didn’t know. But she knew she was Lydia Deetz, even amidst the pulsing dark, and she knew what she had to do.

*****

Lydia lands softly on what she could only imagine was a star. It isn’t hot, or burning the way she imagines living stars are. It's cold, and pulsating, and bright. For a second, she lets herself sink down, and take a shaking breath. Distantly, she can see Ginger and Jaques, each on other little pulsing bundles of light. Steeling herself, she gets to her feet. 

In front of her, the giant maw of space is opening up. A swirl of darkness bigger than comprehension faces her, and at its center a light so bright and many-colored that she could not look directly at it.

“Hello,” she calls uncertainly, and instinctively falls to her knees.

“Hello, Lydia Deetz,” a voice responds.

She gulps. “I’m here to-”

“I know why you’re here,” the voice answers curtly. 

“Are you G-d?” she asks quietly, before she could stop herself.

“I am the source,” the voice responds, “and you are here to ask me for something. So ask.”

“I need to become a demon. A powerful one.”

“You are already powerful. Why do you need more?”

“There are bad people out there. Bad, powerful people. Demons. And they have someone I care about. I need to get him back, but I’m not powerful enough.”

“It’s always more, with humans, dead or alive. It’s never enough.”

“I don’t want more! I just want him back! And I need your help,” she shouts.

“Very well. You know it won’t be easy?”

“Yes.”

“And you know it will hurt?”

“Yes.”

“And you know it is likely to destroy you?”

“Yes.”

“Indulge me a question.”

“Okay.”

“Why do this, if you know all that? Do you really need this person that bad?”

“No,” she says, “No, I don’t need him. But I care about him, and that’s more important than needing him,” she said, drawing in a shaky breath, “He’s alone and he’s suffering, and no one else is going to rescue him. Maybe I’d be fine without him, maybe you’re right, I don’t need him, but I want him, and I love him, and I’m not going to leave him. So please, tell me what I need to do.”

The voice is silent for a long time.

“If you want to be powerful, more powerful than the others, there are six tasks you need to complete.”

The voice pauses, and Lydia nods.

“Upon completion of each task, you will take a totem, to be brought back here, totalling six totems. At the end of the six days, you will bring the totems back here and cast them into the black hole. If, at any point during the trials, the pain becomes too much to bear, you may return back here and cast what totems you have into the black hole, but you will gain only a fraction of the power of demonhood. However, if you fail to return before the six days are up, you will be exorcized and cease to exist except in suffering.”

The voice falls silent. The locket on Lydia’s chest glows green in the darkness. She closes her eyes.

“Your first challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the ranks of the fallen warriors on Mars. Each night they hunt a sacred beast, and kill it for their feast. The totem you must collect is the head of this creature. Upon completion of this task, you will receive your next one.”

Lydia’s heart and mind race. She bites her lip.

“Do you choose to accept, Lydia Deetz?”

“Yes,” she says, thinking of her Beetle, “I do.”


	9. ice cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we check in with beetlejuice. he's not doing so well.
> 
> also smut. like, be warned, there is smut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not so late this time, huh? 
> 
> anyways, a lil bit of a different perspective for this chapter. there do be fucking in it, so just be forewarned. hope everyone is doing well!!

Wherever he is, it’s cold and very blurry. Beetlejuice had done practically every drug under the sun, and he had never felt this groggy or disoriented, or so goddamn cold, for that matter. He grumbles, feeling it reverberate through his chest, up into his head, shaking his vision even further. Mercifully, his body is mostly numb, but this made it harder to get his bearings and try to stand. He thinks he’s kneeling, but he can’t really be sure. He closes his eyes, and tries, really tries to stand. He feels himself shake violently, and falls hard backward. A loud resounding crack rings through the air as his head hits the cold, smooth surface beneath him. 

He’d never been in such bad need of a cigarette, not in his death and certainly not in his life. 

He opens his eyes again, trying to place where he is. Everything is pale, white and there’s a dark splotch above him that he faintly recognizes as his own reflection.

He can’t really tell, but he’s willing to bet he looks like shit.

Something wet and cold hits him square in the middle of his forehead. He winced. Water? Maybe. 

Feeling blindly around, he grasps at something heavy on the floor next to him. It’s cold to the touch, even colder than him, and its surface clings to his fingers. He fidgets with it, turning it over clumsily in his hand. It’s long, it seems to extend out eternally in one direction. 

Following it along the other direction, he eventually comes to something large and limp, which the cold thing was tightly wrapped around. With a jolt, he realizes it is his leg. 

He’s chained up.

What happened to him? How long had he been there?

He tries to remember, but finds he can’t remember much. Mostly shapes and colors and pain and cold.

_I’m Beetlejuice_ , he thinks distantly, trying to latch on to something, anything, _I’m Beetlejuice, I like fucking, I like cocaine, I like cigarettes, I like scaring morons and killing sons of bitches. I’m Beetlejuice, I love Lydia._

That last thought seems to light a little fire in him. _Lydia, Lydia, Lydia._ With great effort, he sits up, sprawling, his back against a wall that feels like ice. 

When was the last time he’d seen her?

It had been a long time, hadn’t it?

It comes back to him in fractured little pieces, the worry when she wasn’t taking his calls, the frantic feeling of not being able to find her. When was that? Was that now? No, that was then. But when was then? 

He feels dizzy. The thinking is hurting him, so he lets go of trying to understand where or when he is. Instead, he lets the memory of her seep into the space behind his closed eyelids, and feels, mercifully, relief. Distantly, the feeling is very familiar, distantly he realizes he’d probably been doing this every day for a very long time now, cradling this memory of her in his mind. It’s a little pathetic, isn’t it, laying on the floor, dreaming of a woman he didn’t deserve, who would never want him.

It didn’t matter. It felt good, and he was nothing if not hedonistic. 

Besides, what if he never saw her again?

He shudders, putting the thought aside. Instead, he lets his consciousness fade into the thought of her, her sleek black hair, the pallor of her skin, her wide, dark eyes.

It starts like this: she’s looking at him, her bangs framing her face, her hair in dark curls, smooth and demure. She’s smirking up at him in the moonlight, wearing a dark lipstick and eyeliner and the tightest, shortest little black dress he’s ever seen her in. It’s her twenty-first birthday. He tried to convince her to go find some breather friends and get pissdrunk bar crawling like any normal living human. 

She was not easily persuaded, insisting there was no one she’d rather spend it with than him. So here they were, catching a cab to some silly little place on the Upper West Side. It’s just starting to get cold, brisk, more than cold, and the city is clamoring with night and life but all he can see is her and all he can hear is the sound of her breath, even and sure, as she looks up at him smirking. 

They get in the cab. The seats are plastic and ripping, and the floor is dirty but neither of them really notice and neither of them really care. The cabbie turns back, smiles, and says, “Where are you two headed?” in a thick accent he can’t quite place. He’s playing human for the night, so everyone can see him, but only she can really _see_ him. She gives the cabbie the address, and he starts the car. Humming, she leans on him, tucking her head against his chest, pressing close as if desperate to hear the absence of a heartbeat. 

For his part, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. If she were a whore, or just any girl, he’d know what to do with his hands. Hell, if she were _any other woman,_ that dress would be rucked up her thighs and he’d be having his way with her.

But she’s not any other woman, she’s Lydia, and as much as he wants to have his way with her _so bad,_ he wants to do right by her more, and that means not fucking her in the back of a taxi, and it probably means not fucking her at all, a fact that he swears is going to kill him (again) one of these days.

So he settles on gently putting one of his hands over hers, and resting his head very softly on her own. Her hair smells like lavender and coffee and just a little like his cigarettes and he just barely suppresses a sigh that would have been more of a moan.

They get to the bar. It’s a tiny little dark place, black walls and weird light fixtures and from what he can tell mostly lesbians and sullen middle-aged men at the bar. Lydia, for her part, brightly asks him what he wants.

What a question. What a fucking question.

He goes for a beer, she goes for a hot toddy, which he tells her is an old lady drink, which makes her laugh. 

She knocks her tea back like it’s a shot, and orders another.

The straps of her dress are made of little star charms, and they shine in the dim light of the bar. He asks her about her classes. She talks about aperture and professors and tests and he understands none of it and asks her to tell him more because her voice is like honey and arsenic and it is all he needs, all he needs. She knocks back another hot toddy, and another, and another, and her answers get more animated and a little slurred but still innately Lydia.

He’s tempted to stay here, in this part of the memory, to just keep asking her the same questions, let the memory loop, let her keep answering, but he knows he has to keep going. 

The bar has a record player, and the Stevie Nicks album playing finishes and the record makes that fuzzy, skipping sound. The barman puts on a new record that he doesn’t recognize, and Lydia’s face lights up.

“I love this song,” she slurs excitedly, as a distorted man’s voice introduces the song over a sultry melody.

“I don’t know it,” he says, feeling the nervousness he felt that night rise in him as she gets up, stumbling only slightly in her black stilettos, and offers him her hand.

“It’s off the You EP, I don’t ‘member which song,” she explains. “It’s Mac Miller but only he calls himself some silly name. Will you dance with me?”

This bar was, strictly speaking, not a dancing establishment. But he never could say no to her, so he took her hand gently in his. He’s not sure exactly what sort of dancing she means until she presses herself right up against him, wrapping an arm around him and clutching his waist with one hand while holding his hand tightly with her other hand. Swaying in a little circle to the music, she sighs against his chest.

Are the dead capable of blushing? He never really noticed, come to think of it, in his many years of death, but if they are, then he is certainly blushing now. She mewls some little nonsense sound against his chest and looks up into his eyes. She looks like she wants to say something, but she bites her lip instead. 

It’s almost imperceptible, but he swears she glances down at his lips. 

They dance for the whole record. It’s short, and at the end of it she does a happy sort of shimmy and looks at him like that again. 

It’s all he can do not to kiss her. 

He didn’t kiss her, not then, not when he had to practically carry her out of the bar (the memory of the feeling of her squirming, warm body in his arms threatens to open something up inside of him), not on the cab ride home, not on the long, meandering walk through the park she’d insisted on, and not when she’d sobered up and they finally got back to her apartment. He’d just walked her to her bedroom door. 

They’d stood, face to face, close, very close, on either side of the threshold to her bedroom. 

“That was the best birthday ever,” she said.

“I’m glad you liked it, babes,” he replied hoarsely.

She looked like she wanted to say something again, or maybe do something.

“Thank you, Beetlejuice,” she said quietly. 

He could never figure out if she wanted him the way he wanted her. He knew it was stupid, knew he’d be bad for her, knew she deserved more, so he never pursued it. He’d just said, “Goodnight, Lyds,” and gone back to his roadhouse and taken care of it himself. 

He’d left her there, left it at that, like he always did.

But now, now what’s the harm? They’re only standing toe to toe in the realm of his mind now, it isn’t real.

He reaches out and grabs her by the waist and pulls her even closer, so they are pressed together. She looks up at him, innocent, in awe, and her breathing gets erratic. It's not a memory anymore, it's his imagination, he knows that. He tips her head back ever so slightly with a finger under her chin, and she closes her eyes, and he closes the distance between them.

The kiss is soft and sweet until she licks at his lower lip and it ignites something in him. Growling, he picks her up and crosses to her bed in two strides.

“Do you want this?” he asks hoarsely. 

“Yes,” she replies, breathless, and he drops her down onto the bed. She bounces ever so slightly, her tits jiggling in the tight confines of her dress as she looks up at him.

“Say it,” he growls.

“I want this,” she says, wanton, shifting her weight, hitching up her skirt ever so slightly, revealing a black lace thong, “I want you, Beetlejuice.”

That about does him in. 

“Kneel for me,” he says, with as much control as he can muster, and she complies. 

He unzips her dress tenderly, hands shaking, and, pulling it over her shoulders, freeing her perky tits, and folds it, placing it aside, carefully.

“I am going to fuck you within an inch of your life,” he says, matter-of-fact, calm, but he can hear the crackling of his own breath, how he is already so worked up he is about to come undone.

“Please,” she half-pleads, half moans, and she takes his hand and places it over her pussy. He can feel how wet she is through her thong. 

“Jesus Christ,” he says, half to Lydia, half to himself. 

He makes quick work of his own clothes, stripping down to nothing in a matter of seconds. 

He knows it isn’t real, he’s only dreaming of her, but when she looks at him bare and there is nothing but adoration and dark attraction in her eyes he can’t help but feel good and right and at home. She takes his very hard cock in her hand and gives it an experimental tug. He shudders, and then slams her down hard onto the bed by the shoulders, positioning himself between her legs. 

He knows this is all in his mind, knows he hardly needs to prepare her, but he wants to, he wants to more than he could ever possibly explain or understand.

So he starts with the crook of her knee and her thigh, biting and kissing his way up her leg, deliberately kissing around her pussy, missing her clit by maybe half an inch, making his way up her belly, and undoing the clasp of her bra with a little pop. Tossing it aside, he takes her breast into his mouth, sucking gently at her nipple, circling it with his tongue, bringing up his hand to mirror the motion on her clit. She makes the same little mewling noise she made when they were dancing in the bar, and it breaks his heart just a little bit.

She’s not his Lyds, not really. She’s a poor facsimile, a depraved manifestation of his mind. His Lyds would push back a little more, quip back at him, have her own way with him. That is, if she were ever interested in him in the first place.

Still, he has no clue where he is or how he got there and he’s in a lot of pain and it’s so close to real that he can almost taste her sweat, almost feel her slick against his palm, and so he allows himself this little pleasure, this little death, even if it is a facsimile, and a sick one at that.

He lets go of her nipple with a little pop, and rearranges them so his face is squarely between her thighs. He circles her clit once, twice with his tongue. She moans. He finds a rhythm, coaxing her with gentle touches until she’s soaked, until she’s begging and pleading, and then abruptly he stops, and positions himself over her.

“You're sure about this?” he asks, and she says, “Please, Beetlejuice, I want you, I need you,” and he lines himself up and sinks into her. 

For a moment it is so blissful he forgets it’s all in his head, forgets he hasn’t seen Lydia in a long time, forgets he has no clue where he is or what is happening to him. He just feels her and sees those eyes looking up at him like he’d wished they would for so long, and something comes undone inside him.

He fucks her hard and animalistic, rutting into her, holding her arms down tightly with his own. With every thrust she makes this sweet little yelp, with every thrust she tightens around him. He talks the whole time, babbling, threatening to keep her like this and fuck her a hundred ways to Wednesday, watching her tits bounce frantically with his each movement.

As he goes he hears his words get cloying, hears himself tell her he wants to marry her for real, wants to build her a dark room and a garden full of nightshade and belladonna, wants to hold her every night and love her every day. 

He cums and she cums, or maybe she cums and he cums, or maybe they cum at the same time. He’s not entirely sure, his brain is starting to get fuzzy. He pulls out, and looks down at her, smiling, crying.

“Want to stay the night?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says.

\------------------------------------------------ 

The next time he wakes up, he’s in the same cold, blue-white room, but he’s bound to a chair, and he’s not alone. 

He blinks.

“Castor? Juno?” He asks dimly. It’s an unlikely pairing, he recognizes this even in his disoriented state, Juno, head of the Newlydead department, in her government uniform, brooch and all, and Castor, the only demon more powerful than him, tall, thin, practically see-through, dirty, dark-clipped hair, leather jacket. 

“Hello, Beetlejuice,” Juno replies coldly. “Are you ready to cooperate?”

“Wh-what?” he asks, trying to understand what was happening.

“Are you ready to tell us where it is?”

“Where what is?” he asks, squinting up at them, trying to remember what they want from him and why he can’t give it to them.

“Don’t play dumb,” says Castor, voice nasally and insincere, “you’re the only one who knows. And you’re going to tell us, or we’re going to keep you here for the rest of time.”

“Do your worst,” he says, laughing, thinking of Lydia, of laying in bed with her, “I’m just fine.”

Half a solar system away, a goth girl, a skeleton and a spider were slipping through a portal to Mars. Lydia feels her pendant surge with heat, and grasps it, smiling, knowing somewhere out there, Beetlejuice was thinking of her. 


	10. bloodbath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lydia begins her series of trials, with the help of her friends. mars proves to be a challenging environment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> she's back already? wild right?   
> i'm trying to get back on a better schedule of writing lol  
> hope you guys are all doing well!!!

The three unlikely travellers fall unceremoniously through their portal, onto the dry, cracked surface of Mars. Lydia sloshes, trying to catch her balance, and every step she takes leaves a very muddy footprint. 

“You alright, hun?” asks Ginger, cautious.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, emboldened by the task before her, trepidatious of the consequences of completing it. 

They don’t call Mars the red planet for nothing. It’s bloodred stone and sand as far as she can see, save for under her feet, where little deep burgundy puddles were fast forming. Far in the distance, a massive red dome rose over the horizon. She motions silently, and they begin their trek as a great red sun begins its slow descent in the sky.

It is a few hours before any of them speak; the weight of just how far deep they are in seems to have settled firmly on each of their shoulders, and no one’s in a particularly chatty mood. But as the red dome grows closer, Jaques finally clears his throat.

“Mon ami, we ‘aven’t really discussed a  _ plan _ ,” he begins, letting the statement hang in the dry air.

“Any suggestions?” she asks, wryly. He clears his throat again.

“Well, they are warriors. The cloak fits the bill, but maybe we bloody it up a little bit, no?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Jaques, we’re dead. We don’t exactly bleed anymore,” she replied, rolling her eyes a little.

“Maybe not, mon cherie, but look what you’ve done to the ground,” he points out. Lydia sees his point, and, kneeling, she takes some of the red mud and smears it over the cloak. For good measure, she dabs it by her nose and in her hairline. In a moment of inspiration, she tears the dress under the cloak about where the hole in her chest is, and adds more mud to the fabric there. 

Jaques nods. “See, now you look the part,” he says enthusiastically. 

“Okay, so now maybe you’ll make it in. But what’re you gonna do once you’re in there, dumplin’?” asks Ginger, doing her best not to look like she’s getting ready for a funeral.

“Well,” says Lydia slowly, “the warriors here kill the beast every night anyhow, right? So we don’t really need to worry about killing it, just stealing the head. Should be easier.”

“I don’t see ‘ow that makes things easier, we still ‘ave to get in there,” says Jaques.

“ _ We _ don’t have to do anything,” Lydia replies pointedly. “I told you two you didn’t have to come.”

Ginger scoffs. “No more of that,” she insists. “We’re here and we’re helping.”

“Alright,” Lydia concedes. “For now, the tentative plan is that I go in, and you guys stay out for backup. Let’s try and cover more ground; the hunt starts at sundown, which means that will be the perfect moment to slip in unnoticed.”

So on they walk, in the dry heat of the sunset. Beetlejuice is everywhere; Lydia hears him in the crunch of her every footfall, feels him in the dry heat, prickling her skin, sees him in the colors of the sky as the sunsets. It’s a good thing, she figures, because if she weren’t so consumed by him she’s not sure she could face the task ahead. But then, she muses, if she weren’t so consumed by him, she wouldn’t be here. 

Finally, when the sun is just beginning to truly set, they find themselves at the mouth of a wide, stone road with a single sign, bearing the etching  _ Valhalla _ and an arrow pointing down the road _. _

“Brave morons, right this way,” Lydia mutters.

“Shhh!” cries Ginger, scandalized. “What if they hear us?”

Lydia shrugs, smirking a little. “They won’t.”

“Ginger has a point, mon cher. We are about to try and steal from the eternal force of the toughest, best fighters humanity has to offer. There’s probably many, many more of them then of us, and they’re much better at-”

“Not helping, Jaques,” Lydia sighs, tying her hair back.

“Aren’t you scared, mon ami?”

“No.”

“How?”

“I can’t be,” she responds, looking forward. “Besides, I don’t exactly scare easily.”

  
Up ahead, the red dome they’ve been trekking towards has finally materialized. It is the exact color of fresh blood, and, Lydia thinks with an uneasy stomach, she wouldn’t be shocked if that’s what it turned out to be. It seems to be almost flowing, and it’s just translucent enough for her to make out the dark shapes of people gathering inside. Just in front of the blood dome, a golden tree glistens in the setting sun. It looks as though it might’ve been a birch tree, if it weren’t golden and on Mars. The road and the dome itself are sheltered by a system of high, ragged cliffs, red and reflective as ruby. 

Lydia scrunches up her eyebrows, thinking.

“Okay gang, here’s the plan; they’re getting ready to go hunt this beast thing, which I’m guessing means there’s about to be a bunch of commotion. We’re gonna find a hiding spot by the cliffs, and let most of them get out. Then, when they’re out hunting, I slip in, and figure out where they’re gonna take it once it’s inside. I’ll find a spot, make myself inconspicuous, and wait. When they get back with the dead thing, you wait like, a half hour, go out front, and raise hell; I don’t care what you do, just be safe and don’t be stupid and make it enough of a distraction that I can grab the head and get out. We meet back at the hiding spot, and portal the fuck out of here.”

Jaques looks like he might puke, and Ginger looks like she thinks she’s about to die, again. 

“Well, do you guys have a better plan?”

Ginger and Jaques look at one another, and then back at her, and then concede.

“Come on then,” she says, steeling herself for the task ahead, “It looks like it’s about to start.”

\-------

Lydia, Ginger and Jaques stand as still as statues, pressed up against the cold stone in the dark shadows of the cliff. They’re underneath a particularly twisted outcropping, which will serve as a marker so they’ll know where to meet back up. In a moment of inspiration, Lydia drew the portal ahead of time, complete with the address “ _ BJ’s Roadhouse, Neitherworld, Foyer _ ”. When the time comes, they’ll only have to draw the knob and they can be on their way, hopefully not pursued by an angry mob of the galaxy’s finest.

The sun finally breeches the horizon. A high pitched sound unlike anything she’s ever heard rips through the hair, and the front of the bloody dome opens. Out pour a mass of the most gnarled and angry people Lydia had ever seen; squinting in the dim light, she could make out young men in camouflage, ripped though with bullets (was it the light, or was their skin as green as their uniforms?), big, burly men in loincloths, run through with spears, knights with punctured armour, samurai with bleeding bellies; there are women, too, daggers through throats and arrows through hearts and bullets between eyes. She sees a particularly large woman with an axe in her head shout wordlessly up at the moon as the charge continues. Jaques nudges her, and she realizes, with a jolt, that this is her chance. Biting her lip, she foregoes thought and just moves, crouching low to the ground, slinking towards the juncture between the opening of the dome and the warriors pouring out of it. She’s going at it at such an angle that as long as no one looks back, she should be virtually invisible until she’s right there. Her feet freeze; she’s suddenly very aware of how tenuous and foolhardy her plan is. For a moment, she’s just crouching there, five or six feet from her entry point. Suddenly, she feels heat surge against her chest. After a second, she realizes it’s the pendant; clutching at it, she smiles, and stands up, whirling around the corner, nearly bumping into a short man with a hole in the middle of his forehead. 

Dodging him, Lydia finds herself inside the dome, which is nearly empty. There’s so much to take in, she nearly stumbles. The dome itself seems to be one large arena; around the edge, tall golden bleachers encircle what looks like a sparring ring, in which a long banquet table has been set up. She shakes herself, knowing she has to move quickly. 

The bleachers aren’t a complete circle; rather, they are a pair of semi circles, both of which have ornate doors on the sides. On instinct, she moves quickly and confidently towards the one to her left, throwing it open and finding herself faced with a long stairway down into darkness. With a deep, steadying breath, she begins the descent.

It’s pretty clear, as the door closes behind her, that the dome was merely the tip of the iceberg. Along the walls, torches light, and she can see up ahead that the staircase begins to diverge and split off into many paths. Lip bitten, she presses forward, trying to maintain the facade of knowing what she is doing. Finally, after what feels like an agonizingly long walk, she comes to the first fork; to the right, an arrow points labelled  _ Barracks, Armory, Rec Hall,  _ and to the left,  _ War Room, Shrines and Altars, Kitchens. _

“Kitchens,” she mutters, bearing left. 

Another long descent. She begins to worry; she has, after all, only got six days to complete six tasks and she has to do them in order, so this really needs to go well. Had she been down here a few minutes, or a few hours? It was hard to tell, with only the flickering torchlight for company. Hallways branch off in one direction or another; one is labelled  _ War Room  _ in what looks like dripping blood, others appear to lead to shrines for Ares, Jesus, Teddy Roosevelt, and half a dozen other gods and men she doesn’t recognize. 

She’s deep in the belly of the place when she finally gets to the bottom, and faces a door labelled  _ The Kitchens.  _ This time, she doesn’t let herself get stricken with the fact that she has absolutely no clue what she’s walking into or what to do. She just throws the door open. 

Her first thought is of The Shining; it's a fitting association; the kitchen is big and very, very empty. There are countless tables and counterspaces, ovens and strange contraptions and doors labelled things like  _ Dry Pantry _ and  _ Wine Cellar.  _

The main difference between the room before her and her memory of the movie is the blood. It’s everywhere, dripping from every surface, dragged in messy paths across the floor, splattered on the walls. Lydia steps inside, looking around, cautiously eeking through the room, which itself twists and turns. At last, she sees him: the chef. Lording over a particularly bloody butcher-block table is a tall, broad, sad looking man in a chef’s coat and hat, sharpening a cleaver. He is just as covered in blood as the room he inhabits. His eyes are small and deep-set, and his face wrinkled and stony. He appears to be waiting for something. 

What to do, what to do?

The only thing she can really do is her funky little magic trick with the water. But, she muses, what is blood, if not water, with a little twist? 

This realization comes not a moment too soon, because he turns and spots her and frowns, approaching and raising his cleaver. Concentrating, she squeezes her eyes shut, and balls her hands into little fists.

When she opens them, she is relieved to find him frozen in place, the blood having formed a thin shell around him. His mouth is open and brows furrowed, as if he were about to ask a question. She pushes him back into the corner he came from. With a little manipulation, she manages to get him back into some semblance of a neutral posture, and sits him with his knife and his sharpener down at the table. 

Suddenly, there is clattering on the stairs, the sound of at least several feet and foreboding thud-thud-thud. Thinking quickly, she opens a cabinet to her left and throws herself in it, leaving it open just a crack, so she can see what’s going on. A scrawny soldier, who looks younger than her and has his throat slit is hefting the dead weight of a large creature, assisted by a pair of men with broad swords.

In a moment of panic, she realizes they’re going to try to interact with the chef. Thinking quickly, she focuses all her energy on moving the ice around him, so he sort-of looks to be sharpening his knife, especially with his back to them. She bites her lip and waits for them to make the next move.

“Where should we put ‘er, Tom?‘ asks one of the broad swordsmen. Improvising, she wills one of his arms out, gesturing it in the direction of a table further away from her and her puppet.

“Alright, you’re the boss,” he replies, and they lug the great thing over and plop it down.

“Are you okay, Tom?” asks the kid. “You don’t look so good.”

She moves his head up and down.  _ Yes,  _ she thinks,  _ I’m fine, go away, go upstairs. _

“Okay,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. The three depart as soon as they came, and she let out a little breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Kicking open the cupboard, she grabs the nearest knife and dashes to the table, unprepared for what she finds.

It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, save possibly for Beetlejuice when he smiles at her. 

The beast was so large that it hung off the table on all four sides, four beautiful, iridescent, red-stained limbs lolling lifelessly every which way. It’s body was muscular even in the slackness of death, strong and thick, with white fur that seemed to dance in the light. Its long and blood-matted tail seemed to swirl every imaginable color together, even now, sprawled, dragging on the floor. Out of its shoulders, two great, white wings emerged, feathers no less beautiful for being tattered. They were massive, large enough that, even limp, she was certain they could carry the weight of the beast and then some. For one moment, she stood, dumbstruck.

After a second, she starts, and rounds the table, finally coming to the head. 

It is unlike anything she had ever seen before. For a second, she thinks she is looking into the face of a woman. It has long, flowing hair, the color of which seems to shift with the light (blue? pink? green? white? ) parted around its face the way a woman’s might be. Its mouth, a pair of soft, pink lips, seems human, but that’s where the similarities end. For one thing, its head is larger than any human head Lydia had ever seen. Bigger than a breadbox, that’s for sure. For another, it’s eyes, the color of opal or moonstone, are massive, taking up much of its face, round and staring up at her with the fear and confusion of a child. 

Time is running out. She lays the knife along the throat of the creature, holding its great head up by the hair, and begins to saw.

It is bloody, hard work; the wet, squishing sound of flesh cleaving flesh, the hard snap of the fragile little bones of the neck, the loud pop when she breeches the windpipe. The blood doesn’t gush, it’s been dead for too long for that, but it bleeds nonetheless, steadily and surely. She holds her breath, aware of the time; she hopes Ginger and Jaques are okay, that they’re not causing her diversion just yet, but the soft hum of heat emanating from her necklace tells her everything is going to be okay. 

Finally, finally, she cuts through the last bit of flesh, and the head heaves onto the floor, some fifty pounds of dead weight. Pulling it up by the hair, she feels her muscles buckle and strain under the weight. Blood is leaking out of its eyes, now, and its mouth has fallen open to reveal rows upon rows of sharp, shiny teeth. 

Gulping, she makes her way to the door, cradling the head as best she can in her arms. She gets most of the way there before she notices the footsteps, and by the time she does it is already too late, the door is open and some massive lumbering man in rusted armour, face red with mead, steps in, calling, “Tom, are you okay? I heard you were looking a little-”

He falls silent when he sees her, and recognition clicks in his eyes as they dart to the head in her hands. She acts on instinct, calling her water out of the hole in her chest. She’s quick, but he’s quicker, drawing his blade and hefting her up against the wall, pinning her arm in place before she can freeze him.

“I know what you are. We’ve let your kind get away with this before. Never again,” he spits. “What did you do to Tom?”

“He’ll be fine,” she manages, “Once you thaw him out.”

The man curses, slamming her harder against the wall. “Last time they gutted him. It was months before he was okay. What makes you think you have the right?”

It’s then, with horror, that Lydia hears the rest of the footsteps: more are coming.

“I don’t,” she rasps, voice as muddy as always, “I don’t think I have the right.”

“Then why?” he asks, practically roaring, and she thinks she sees a glimpse of grief in his eyes.

“I’m in love,” she replies, voice biting, and it catches him just off guard enough that she can knee him in the stomach, grab the head, and make a break for the stairs. She flings the door open, and sees half a dozen undead warriors, all clamoring to stop her. She’s ready this time, has them frozen to the wall before they can so much as scream. Something that might be adrenaline is pounding through her;  _ up the stairs, up the stairs, get up the stairs.  _ There’s puddles of blood by the doors to all the shrines now, but she barely has the moment to register what she sees, bounding upward, upward, the heavy weight of the head in her arms only propelling her faster. 

She gets to the top of the stairs, hears some sort of commotion happening out front.  _ Jaques and Ginger,  _ she thinks, or maybe says out loud. The door is already ajar; she slots herself in the little open space created, peaking out. Ginger is spinning a web in the golden tree out front, swinging seductively from branch to branch. 

She’s putting on a show. 

Jaques, for his part, is bobbing and weaving, dipping in and out of sight, singing Edith Piaf and keeping everyone sufficiently confused and distracted. The warriors may be strong, but Jaques is light, nothing but bone, and he’s faster than all of them. She lets herself smile for a moment. What a team they are.

She steels herself, kicks the door open and waves to Ginger, who catches her eye and in turn signals to Jaques. There’s nothing else to do; she clutches the head as tightly as she can, and runs for the meeting spot. Jaques and Ginger follow suit, and things are nothing but pulsing chaos for several moments; spears are thrown, axes chucked, and she slides into the portal, careful to jump the chalk line. Jaques is right on her heels, Ginger in his arms. She bends down to draw the knob and finish the portal, and takes one last look at Mars, the mobs of soldiers bearing down, not five paces away, the red, the gold, the darkening sky. Then she knocks, and they fall through the ground, landing with a thud on the floor of the Roadhouse, just missing the blade of a single thrown knife.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments, and I'll be updating soon!!


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